I Love You

"Brought up on love and the reasons why but the reasons why ought not to be said and so I'm left hands held to my head"

Johnny was rich, and brought up to believe that he needed to fall in love with someone with equal status and money, who would be his social match. A cookie-cutter woman.

Johnny and the artist fell in love, and they tried to make it work, but: "Gold and waves and Betty Blue Are the images that lead to the clues of why I can't love you"

Gold = money, waves = distance, Betty Blue = obsession. They were in love, but she was just so opposite to what Johnny's life could accept that in the end he left her.

I'm sorry, @MemoryWakeon, but you are way off the mark here.

Tanita Tikaram's debut album was sprinkled with suggestions about her sexuality and this song is probably the most 'explicit' of them all.

Johnny was brought up to believe in male-female attraction, and nothing else that deviates from that. Johnny is attracted to Tanita... but she already knows that she doesn't like boys (hence this song).

When Johnny confesses his love for Tanita, it puts her in a very awkward position ("And so I'm left hands held to my head"). Also, "Is it possible for you and me?" is cleverly used to confound the listener into thinking of a different meaning from the one originally intended (i.e. can it work between a lesbian and a heterosexual male?).

"The smoothness, strangeness / Fits like a glove" is a subtle sexual reference to lesbian intimacy and sex. This theory is further supported when she later mentions that Betty Blue is one of the reasons why she can't possibly love Johnny. In other words, she sees Béatrice Dalle as her physical ideal.

This is how I interpreted the song, when it was first released in 1987, and I haven't changed my mind since then. Do a web search on Tanita and you should find sufficient evidence about her homosexuality.

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