"I love you more when I'm missing you."
"I love the danger in distance."
I wish I'd written them. I wish I'd written the song. It will resonate with anyone who's ever had a failed long-distance relationship.
I had a boyfriend once who wanted to write songs with me. I fobbed him off. I am not a poet and I believe that the best songs are accessible poetry. You hum along, you get it, but the best lines, the mysterious lines, stay with you.
Paul Kelly has a song called Don't Explain. In three verses, he outlines the end of a relationship between an older woman and a younger man.
"You sure know
How to use your hands
But you don't have
A great attention span"
The simplicity and sparsity of the language is matched by the melody. It adds up to pragmatic heartbreak.
Rod Stewart wrote the same relationship from the other perspective in Maggie May.
"The morning sun
When it's in your face
Really shows your age"
I understand those lines (and see my own lines) more and more as I get older.
On her blog today, Lady Estrogen featured another of those lines, this time from The Whitlams song Melbourne.
"If I had three lives, I'd marry her in two"
I asked The Builder for one of his favourite lines. His is from Forever Young (originally by Alphaville, covered by Youth Group in 2005)
"Youth is like diamonds in the sun
And diamonds are forever"
There are lines that make you ache with wonder and envy. And then there are lines like my personal nomination for Worst Line In A Song Ever, courtesy of Patrick Swayze.
"She's like the wind
Through my tree"
From the song, She's Like The Wind.
But the beauty of songs is that they're so subjective. One woman's fabulous is another woman's farcical.
This is my idea of fabulous.
Which song do you wish you'd written?
[image: vinyl music decal from pedped/etsy]
