Written late February 2013
Sometimes, an attempt to rescue a relationship just doesn’t come on time.
This bit of wisdom comes from girl barely in her 20s at the time she wrote this, yet apparently has had her full share of heart break.
It is hard to pin down just when she wrote this song, but it had to have come at a time before her break up with her husband, because his brilliant arrangements decorate what might otherwise have been a relatively simple song.
By simple, I don’t mean lacking in texture in quality, but rather a basic approach, a piano, singing with some minor accompaniment – and, of course, her amazing voice and harmonies.
The song has a classic pop/rock structure with some variation.
Although it follows the classic rock pattern of verse and chorus, it varies it with what might be called a pre-chorus, something akin to what some class folk tunes used to use during their heyday in the 1950s.
There is no real middle eight or instrumental as in some of her other songs.
The verses don’t really follow the classic a-b-a-b rime scheme or even a couplet rime. In fact, if there is a rime to be found in the verses, you might need a metal detector to uncover it.
While the chorus has a simple single rime, its strength is in repetition and intense harmony.
Production on the verse is basic, mostly voice and piano until the later verses. In what I call a pre-chorus the song adds a low pitch harmonic voice, either her singing or some kind of pipe instrument.
The chorus with its amazing harmony makes the whole song work, even though at times the voice singing the melody isn’t completely in sync with the harmony, and it is clearly not meant to be.
The second and third verses largely repeat the first verse musically, although we get the same low pitch harmony that the pre chorus has.
The song has three verses and pre choruses and closes with the chorus repeated several times.
The lyrical content, which is my main interest here as I search for early examples of her poetry, bemoans the loss of a dream, something she sees slipping away.
“You wake up one morning, trying to plant your feet on the ground that isn’t there anymore,” she sings.
In the pre chorus she makes it clear she still wants him, still needs him, but can’t wait around for him to love her, the way she needs to be loved.”
The chorus makes it clear that there is no more time to cry, no more time to try.
The second verse shifts focus as she concludes “something ain’t right,” and she doesn’t know what she needs to change in herself (as she internalizes and accepts responsibility as she would do later in her life, taking blame for what she may well be innocent of.)
“You look all around to see your face, you know it’s you, but it ain’t you anymore,” she sings.
In the pre chorus she says she still loves him, but doesn’t need him, and won’t want him, she needs to make her own life.
The last verse goes on to say that she is pretending it’s not so, so even though she knows what she has to do, she still holds on.
“You can’t face it, the music is gone,” and she tries to end it, knowing that it is the right thing to do, and she knows it’s a struggle, but she has to move on.
It is impossible to know who she wrote this song about. The pain is obvious, and the situation is something – as her later poetry indicates – is something she tends to repeat, holding out hope for love, then forced to relinquish it when it fails to live up to its initial promise.
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