Something Happened On The Way To Heaven

This is quite a disturbing song actually. Beneath this song's timeless adult contemporary pop beat lies a truly sinister message... despite its seemingly innocent, catchy lyrical phrasing made safe for top 40 radio play - it's surprisingly easy to unravel just what he is meaning to convey with this gem of a song. I will get to exactly what that is in just a bit - but first I'll introduce a few clues:

1) The name of the song is "On the way to Heaven" (think about that for a second... odd name choice for a song most people assume is merely about a man trying to mend a broken relationship, right? I suppose "I want you back was taken" - but nevertheless, it should first be understood that the narrator is not who you think it is...

2) Re-read carefully the first verse of the song... "We had a life, we had a love..." - the narrator is immediately expressing the misery of his situation - implying that not only has he lost a love - but more importantly, that he's lost his life!

3) Yes, I’m suggesting that the narrator is indeed dead (fine, don't believe me? read the very next verse "...but you don't know what you've got 'til you lose it") Taken in the literal sense this would mean that the narrator is no longer among the living - but is confined now to the ethereal afterlife where he obsessively laments over the torment of having to spend the rest of eternity never again being able to experience this woman's love once more.

4) Yet beneath his rhetorical demands to know how many times he must say he’s sorry - he is quietly laying out his menacing plan to capture her love once more the only way he possibly can - which is by haunting her for the rest of her life… as a ghost.

5) As he clearly has much unfinished business on earth - his spirit is incapable of moving on to the afterworld - and thus it was when he was “on the way to heaven” (the reason behind the obscure naming of the song) that he realized this was his only option to be near her.

6) This is not a break-up/make-up/love song - in fact the lyrics possess nearly all of the same narrative techniques routinely used in classic ghost stories. For instance, his spirit is having a great deal of trouble explaining the circumstances surrounding his indeterminate state “I don't know, I don't have all the answers” and he explicitly warns her (quite threateningly) “you can run - but you can’t hide” over and over again - and that he’s “not leaving less you come with me” - insinuating that his spirit will constantly follow her until they reunite in death and move on to Heaven together.

7) Another common element of a classic ghost tale - in his attempts to make earthly contact with her, he admits they shared hardships and nonetheless insists “I'm on your side, you're all I need” and out of respect that most people are taught not to believe in ghosts - he pleads for her to “please believe in me”.

8) The final nail in the coffin comes with the final verses of the song:

“They say you can't take it with you when you go and I believe it, but taking what I've got or being here with you, you know I'd rather leave it.”

And now, to rephrase it just to clarify how these words correspond perfectly within my hypothetical context of the unrequited love between a forlorn phantom doomed to walk the earth in the shadowy footprints of the woman and love of his life he departed from too soon:

“They say you can't take (the earthly-pleasures of love) with you when you go (to Heaven) and I believe it, but taking (my place in Heaven) or being here (almost) with you, you know I'd rather leave (Heaven for later).”

9) In the end - the most intriguing question remains whether or not the woman is longing to reunite with him one day in Heaven as well - or if his constant eerie presence is unwelcomed. Perhaps… she never even knew this man at all - and all of his memories of their star-crossed love affair were merely the result of nothing more than a sick infatuation with a woman he observed from afar, and whose twisted imagination created the love and their life he mentions they shared in the song - perhaps he was a complete and total stranger… just some random creep who lived down the street - an outcast from society who balefully sat alone day and night watching her pass by and over the years in his loneliness and out of his insanity simply became… obsessed.

And somehow she still can't explain those sleepless nights she hears his whispering from just beyond the darkness of her bedroom:

“You can run… but you can’t hide!”