Most pop songs about love are fixated with the fleeting early stages. Of course they are. It’s where the emotions are most heightened and intense. From ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ to ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’ and beyond, songwriters are preoccupied with capturing the giddiness of those first flushes.
But what about those of us in long-term relationships? Domesticity and taking the bins out don’t have quite the same allure when it comes to penning a tune, which is what makes this track stand out all the more.
Since Arab Strap broke up around a decade ago, frontman Aidan Moffat has made a couple of albums with jazzer Bill Wells. I think this, in particular, might be the most poignant and beautiful song about a long-term relationship I’ve ever heard. How about you?
Hey, Joe! What a lovely surprise. Pull up a chair, grab a tinny, we’ll introduce you to some of the Australian contingent.
Tracey Thorn’s Late in the Afternoon is bleakly realistic but strangely comforting about a long-term relationship:
I’m not a mystery
You know everything about me
I stand here every night
In fluorescent bathroom light
Every blemish, every scar
You know how they got there
And where they are
That whole album is just lyrically superb. On aging, parenthood, relationships – everything.
This is one of Mr. Lowe’s loveliest odes to mature relationships (an area where many of us never thought he’d excel)….
Not quite in the spirit of the OP but Cathal Smyth’s A Comfortable Man is one of the albums of the year. The tunes delicately break the listeners heart as he dissects, in confessional detail, the end of his long-term marriage.
Excellent idea for a thread.
More a meditation on mortality than a conventional love song perhaps, but Iron and Wine’s Naked as we came seems to fit in here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp8mXk4UvXM
Amen to Tigger re Cathal.
Here’s Lord Barg.
Long term kitchen sink love drama.
https://youtu.be/rvbRv0DAL_0
This has always struck me as a very grown-up love song.
Chris Wood makes a point of singing songs about grown-up love, most deliberately in ‘My Darling’s Downsized’.
Ralph McTell – Naomi
It’s a lovely, lovely song.
“Age has made her frail, I’m scared to take her in my arms”
and
“She wasn’t all I wanted, but she’s all I’ll ever need”
John Prine and Iris DeMent on the more humdrum aspects of grown up love: In spite of ourselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5axlwCBXC8
Paul Simon was all of 26 or 27 when he wrote this but it sounds so marriage-weary:
Joe! Great day in the morning, people! We drink from the keg of glory! Bring us the finest muffins and bagels in all the land!
Sadly I can’t think of any songs for your thread.
Does this fit? I don’t actually have one (or need, as I have better) at the moment, and as many of the youtube vids point out, having a wife ain’t an exclusively male status.
Be that as it may, it is about as mature a love songs as I can think of.
Beautiful song, vocals, arrangement and sentiment. Without fail a “something in my eye” tune.
Just been listening to the “new” version, all bestringed and lovely, from Paradise is There, the Tigerlily revisited album.
By golly, when is someone going to tout for the AWers albums of the year?
@bungalowjoe usually kicks off but he hasn’t posted for 6 months. I hope he’s OK. Are you OK, @bungalowjoe?
Thanks Tiggerlion, not been about much on here lately but pleased I am still remembered.
Been busy lately hosting 2 weekly shows on Mixcloud – Big Blues Bonanza for Blues Lovers and Red Rose Country for Country music lovers. You can listen to all my previous shows at https://www.mixcloud.com/bungalowjoe/
Will look at doing a top album of 2015 poll if there is enough interest
Remembered? Are you joking @bungalowjoe? Your heroic deeds with the Best of the Year are written in gold in the Annals of the Afterword.
Nice to see you, Joe.
Thanks Kaisfatdad – It’s good to be back here
I think we are all champing at the bit waiting for you to kick things off.
Good to know all is well in your bungalow, Joe. I’m looking forward to listening to The Blues broadcast.
Me mate. It is lovely, I promised a review on here but part of the review was to revisit Tigerlily and listen to the albums side by side. Paradise is there is lush, has wonderful vocals and stands alone to be quite honest but I want to compare the two before I review and its a while since I played Tigerlily. Will be back here tonight.
Looking back…..
I love this song. It’s almost worth aging for so I can play it to Mrs H at our ruby wedding. It makes me nostalgic for the future.
Like the Paul Simon song above, another song of astonishing maturity from one so young:
If I may be permitted a moment’s philosophising, I think one of the things that makes you “grown up” is the realisation that there is a difference between falling in love and being in love. The former is easy, and, I would contend, indistinguishable from mental illness; the latter takes work from both parties and I think Gram Parsons describes this beautifully.
To save anyone asking, the above is available on a collection of demos released by Sundazed but the song was originally recorded by, of all people, Peter Fonda in 1967 (see Rhino boxed set Where The Action Is). Also, a nice version by Sid Griffin’s Coal Porters on the tribute album Conmemorativo.
Randy Newman – “I Miss You”
“I want to thank you for the good years
And apologize for the rough ones”
A lovely live performance from a gig in Stuttgart here:
XTC’s In Another Life, penned by Colin Moulding, is I think a wry and warm look at (probably) his marriage, which contrasts nicely with some of his earlier songs.
The hazy, slightly drunken ‘Grass’ recalls adolescent sex and cider, but by ‘Wake Up’ he writes sick notes to his employer, because he and his wife would rather stay in bed than go to work.
By In Another Life, he speculates on how the fantasy marriage might have been;
I’ll bring your milk tray, from a parachute
I’ll play the Hollywood hunk, you can dye your roots
Or I’ll be your Burton if you’ll be my Liz
And there might be flying pigs
In another life
And how it really was;
That’s how we’re built, love
Don’t let it wilt, love
I’ll take your flat feet
Well, if you’ll take my habits, it all works out in the end
Ah, but in another life.
Moulding’s ‘Bungalow’ is another of his songs I love, recalling how his parent’s dream was the little bungalow by the sea to retire to, but which they never did.
I also like it, on Moulding’s “Frivolous Tonight”, when the women in the pub “…talk about husbands’ hairy backs”
Good line.
Yes! And the ‘Raelbrook Shirts’. Absolutely nails a certain time and feeling.
Roseanne Cash – Etta’s Tune. About a long term relationship, and also about the pressures of separation:
“The first song we wrote was called ‘Etta’s Tune’ — it was about Marshall and Etta Grant; Marshall was the original bass player in the Tennessee Two with my dad,” Cash notes. “And on that first trip to Arkansas, when we went down for the fundraiser for the boyhood home project, he came to rehearsal that day for the concert that night and he played his big bass guitar, and he had a brain aneurysm that night. So I stayed a few days with Etta, his wife of 65 years, and she said to me that every morning of their lives, they woke up and said to each other, ‘What’s the temperature darling?’ And I told John, that’s such a sweet way to start the day.’ And he said, ‘It’s also the first line of a song.'”
And I love this one from Kathryn Williams:
Old Low Light #2
In a room, banging on about the world in words
Theres an old low light, it flicks on and off like our opinions
Three hours without a word, then you stroke my arm
Theres an old low light in me and it switches on
Its not visible to anyone but our love lives there, I can feel it glimmer
Its slow and quiet and stares out at years
And it makes me love you more
More, more, more, more
In a different city bed in my sister’s house
There’s an old low light, it keeps me awake, without the shape of you
Track four on a CD you made for me
Theres a note like light and it changes the air
And it makes me love you more
More, more, more, more, more
Read more: Kathryn Williams – Old Low Light #2 Lyrics | MetroLyrics
A song which recognises that long term relationships have their highs and lows*, but is still defiantly optimistic. I love it
I don’t care anymore who was right
And who was wrong and who was left and who was leaving
I’ll overlook everything if you can overlook everything
I know you’re worn out but you know I’m worn out too
If everyone screws up, and I know that we both do,
Doesn’t it make sense, me with you?
If you and me, if we blow it when it’s
The last thing we should do,
Don’t you think we should stick together?
Don’t you think we should be the ones who go
Post to wire, months to years,
Days to nights, and minutes to hours?
*I was going to write “have their ups and downs” but then I remembered that Moose is back.
Immediately brought this to mind. A bit country, but like most country, a great story, and a bit sad.
https://youtu.be/IDwu3H1AEeQ
They drank their anniversary glass
A silent moment passed
Then they kissed
She knows there’s something on his mind
He’ll tell her in due time
What it is
He says “I’ve never built
Your mansion on a hill
Or warmed you in the Spanish sun
I simply blink my eye
And think as years fly by
Of all the things we’ve never done”
She smiles and takes his hand in hers
And says “It just occured
To me now
The thought that brings you such regret
What hasn’t happened yet
It makes me proud…”
“You never walked away
When I needed you to stay
Or made me feel I’m not the one
There’ve been no broken vows
And there reason we’re here now
Is all the things we’ve never done”
“We’ve never grown apart
You never broke my heart
With secrets that you’ve kept me from
We’ve never been untrue
And I’m still here with you
Through all the things we’ve never done”
Everything Gladys Knight sang sounded so mature. He she is with The Pips.
Neither One Of Us
Ah it’s Joe. I’m not going back and forth between London and the West Country today so I can post some vids instead of writing on that there twitter. Although my instant thoughts on this are fairly obvious songs.
First up is Springsteen’s Tunnel Of Love, which has been my idea of a grown up song since I was 18.
The Pogues Rainy Night In Soho, which to me sounds like it’s written from the point of view of a much older couple who’ve been together all their lives.
The Proclaimers Wherever You Roam, which is a love song, but a parent’s love song. Its quite recent, came out the month after my daughter was born. Had me in bits on the train once.
The Beatles – When I’m 64
Celebrating future domestic mundanity
“Uh girl, tonight we’re gonna make love. Wanna know how I know? Cos it’s Wednesday.”
The first time I heard this song was hearing them do it live at the Edinburgh Fringe and, as a man who was, and still is, in a long term relationship, this was both hilarious and pretty much entirely spot on. Though I manage more than two minutes (three minutes?).
Another form of grown up love.
Billy Paul – Me and Mrs Jones
Bizarre video. If it wasn’t enough with the Kaliesque dancers, Billy’s singing with a (post-coital?) fag in his mouth.