| Boz Scaggs – We're All Alone Lyrics | 3 years ago |
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I lost my wife of 40 years six years ago. We were married for four decades, but we were together for 43 and deeply in love all that time, though there were some rocky patches. In our late 70s, she developed dementia that gradually robbed her of her memory—except her memory of me. She remembered to the end that I was “her man.” So I FELT what “We’re All Alone” meant before I started trying to analyze the song. The first time I listened to the words, I thought of Janice, and at several points in the song, I broke down sobbing. I felt her comforting me for my loss and reassuring me about feelings of guilt left behind by some of the more turbulent parts of our decades-long love affair. My experience left me with no doubt: In this song, a deceased female lover is returning in spirit to comfort the beloved she had to leave behind. From an analytical point of view, some people struggle with this interpretation. For days I pondered the lines that baffled them most: “Close your eyes, Ami” and “learn how to pretend.” I was almost ready to consider the suggestion that the song might be about gay lovers, because of the use of the French term for “boyfriend” in Skaggs’ original lyrics. Also, I could see how people might question why the song would urge pretending as a way of coping with distress. Yet the solutions to these puzzles turn out to be simple if you assume a deceased female lover is addressing words of comfort to the grieving male beloved she left behind. She would, of course, address him as “Ami,” because he was her “boyfriend,” not her “girlfriend.” And of course she would encourage him to learn how to pretend, because in their present state, he could only be with her in imagination. Everything else in the song fell into place once these issues cleared up. “We’re All Alone” thus remains one of the most powerful songs I have ever encountered. Perhaps a future life will reunite me with my lost love. In this one, I can only be with her in “a dream.” |
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| Boz Scaggs – We're All Alone Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| @[oriononthehorizon:45219] I'm sure you're right. I've gone over and over the original version of the lyrics (not the ones Rita Coolidge had changed). I was baffled by the line "Close your eyes, Ami..." until I realized it was how the spirit of a female lover (the "Amie," or "girlfriend" in French) would address, and comfort, the love she left behind (her "Ami," or "boyfriend"). I can understand interpretations that suggest the song might be about a homosexual relationship, but they seem to be forgetting the simpler interpretation. In either case, "We're All Alone" is bound to have a powerful emotional impact on a lover left behind by the death of the beloved. | |
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