Dear Mary

"Dear Mary" was written by Linda and Teddy Thompson and opens Fashionably Late at 3:29. Richard Thompson plays guitar and sings backing vocals, Kamila Thompson sings backing vocals and Danny Thompson plays acoustic bass; George Graham said the sound is instantly classic. The Green Man Review heard a catchy, loping waltz about a woman who is far from saintly and whose misdeeds are catching up with her, and Mark Kemp in Rolling Stone called it a cautionary ballad with Linda, Teddy and Kamila harmonizing and Richard's guitar filling the spaces. Peter Viney at Toppermost names it an essential Linda song.

She opened her set with it at the Aladdin Theater in Portland on October 5, 2002, the first US tour in two decades, and Terry Gross played it as the opener of the Fresh Air interview on September 23, 2002, calling it a family, or an ex-family affair. We found no comment from her on its meaning, no chart history or video, no covers, and no setlist.fm entry; it also appears on a Songbirds compilation (2002) and a Paste sampler. Whether our upload is the album version is not known.