The song lyrics were written by the band Van Halen, as they were asked to write a song for the 1979 movie "Over the Edge" starring Matt Dillon. The movie (and the lyrics, although more obliquely) are about bored, rebellious youth with nothing better to do than get into trouble. If you see the movie, these lyrics will make more sense. It's a great movie if you grew up in the 70s/80s you'll definitely remember some of these characters from your own life. Fun fact, after writing the song, Van Halen decided not to let the movie use it.
Snow can wait I forgot my mittens
Wipe my nose get my new boots on
I get a little warm in my heart when I think of winter
I put my hands in my father's glove
I run off where the drifts get deeper
Sleeping Beauty it drips me with a frown
I hear a voice you must learn to stand up
For yourself cause I can't always be around
He says when you gonna make up your mind
When you gonna love you as much as I do
When you gonna make up your mind
'Cause things are gonna change so fast
All the white horses are still in bed
I tell you that I'll always want you near
You say that things change my dear
Boys get discovered as winter melts
Flowers come pleading for the sun
Years go by and I'm used to waiting
With a ring with some snowman's
Mirror mirror where's the crystal palace
But I can only see myself
Skating around the truth who I am
But I know the Ice is getting thin
When you gonna make up your mind
When you gonna love you as much as I do
When you gonna make up your mind
'Cause things are gonna change so fast
All the white horses are still in bed
I tell you that I'll always want you near
You say that things change my dear
Hair is gray and the fire is burring
So many dreams on the shelf
You say I wanted you to be proud of me
I always wanted that myself
When you gonna make up your mind
When you gonna love you as much as I do
When you gonna make up your mind
'Cause things are gonna change so fast
All the white horses have gone ahead
I tell you that I'll always want you near
You say that things change my dear
Never change
All the white horses
Wipe my nose get my new boots on
I get a little warm in my heart when I think of winter
I put my hands in my father's glove
I run off where the drifts get deeper
Sleeping Beauty it drips me with a frown
I hear a voice you must learn to stand up
For yourself cause I can't always be around
He says when you gonna make up your mind
When you gonna love you as much as I do
When you gonna make up your mind
'Cause things are gonna change so fast
All the white horses are still in bed
I tell you that I'll always want you near
You say that things change my dear
Boys get discovered as winter melts
Flowers come pleading for the sun
Years go by and I'm used to waiting
With a ring with some snowman's
Mirror mirror where's the crystal palace
But I can only see myself
Skating around the truth who I am
But I know the Ice is getting thin
When you gonna make up your mind
When you gonna love you as much as I do
When you gonna make up your mind
'Cause things are gonna change so fast
All the white horses are still in bed
I tell you that I'll always want you near
You say that things change my dear
Hair is gray and the fire is burring
So many dreams on the shelf
You say I wanted you to be proud of me
I always wanted that myself
When you gonna make up your mind
When you gonna love you as much as I do
When you gonna make up your mind
'Cause things are gonna change so fast
All the white horses have gone ahead
I tell you that I'll always want you near
You say that things change my dear
Never change
All the white horses
Lyrics submitted by kevin, edited by adelaster, azenji, pluckystella
Winter Lyrics as written by Tori Amos
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Capitol CMG Publishing, Downtown Music Publishing, Songtrust Ave
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
Add your thoughts
Log in now to tell us what you think this song means.
Don’t have an account? Create an account with SongMeanings to post comments, submit lyrics, and more. It’s super easy, we promise!
More Featured Meanings
Light Up The Sky
Van Halen
Van Halen
Standing On The Edge Of Summer
Thursday
Thursday
In regards to the meaning of this song:
Before a live performance on the EP Five Stories Falling, Geoff states “It’s about the last time I went to visit my grandmother in Columbus, and I saw that she was dying and it was the last time I was going to see her. It is about realizing how young you are, but how quickly you can go.”
That’s the thing about Geoff and his sublime poetry, you think it’s about one thing, but really it’s about something entirely different. But the lyrics are still universal and omnipresent, ubiquitous, even. So relatable. That’s one thing I love about this band. I also love their live performances, raw energy and Geoff’s beautiful, imperfectly perfect vocals. His voice soothes my aching soul.
Dreamwalker
Silent Planet
Silent Planet
I think much like another song “Anti-Matter” (that's also on the same album as this song), this one is also is inspired by a horrifying van crash the band experienced on Nov 3, 2022. This, much like the other track, sounds like it's an extension what they shared while huddled in the wreckage, as they helped frontman Garrett Russell stem the bleeding from his head wound while he was under the temporary effects of a concussion. The track speaks of where the mind goes at the most desperate & desolate of times, when it just about slips away to all but disconnect itself, and the aftermath.
Punchline
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran sings about missing his former partner and learning important life lessons in the process on “Punchline.” This track tells a story of battling to get rid of emotions for a former lover, whom he now realized might not have loved him the same way. He’s now caught between accepting that fact and learning life lessons from it and going back to beg her for another chance.
Page
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
There aren’t many things that’ll hurt more than giving love a chance against your better judgement only to have your heart crushed yet again. Ed Sheeran tells such a story on “Page.” On this track, he is devastated to have lost his lover and even more saddened by the feeling that he may never move on from this.
I get something slightly different out of the song actually. To me "Winter" by Tori Amos is about a father telling his daughter that he is going to die and that she has to live life without him. "Winter" is a song about the death of a dad. In the beginning she emphasizes that she is very close to her dad and that she needs him and his way of protecting her. - "I put my hands in my father’s glove.." the whole chorus is like a dialogue between father and daughter. the dad says she needs to realize who she is and she needs to understand what a great person she is. this , however, also shows her lack of self-esteem and her dad tries to fix it by saying "When you gonna love you as much as I do" "Cause things are gonna change so fast"- he won't be able to be with her for the rest of her life. things will change when he is not around anymore. "All the white horses are still in bed" is the most significant expression of the song to me. the white horses are a symbol for his death. if I picture white horses, i see white horses running at night. horses are associated with running, therefore with "leaving". the fact that the horses are not black though underlines the tone of the song. you could call it the beauty of a tragedy even though that is something people do not realize or atleast it takes a while to realize that the death of your father changes your life and if you want it to be, it can be for the better because indeed you need to start believing in something or you will be broken for the rest of your life. the love you feel for your father is overwhelming and even though you might think now it is not worth anything anymore, you realize at some point that a feeling as strong as this cannot be useless. the second verse is obviously about growing up and in the end she says " But I know the Ice is getting thin" which means to me that she knows the older they both become, the closer death is. when she sings -"Hair is gray and the fire is burrnig so many dreams on the shelf" she basically says again that she is aware of the fact that her father is getting older and that all the dreams he has and maybe both of them have won't come true since his time is running out. "You say I wanted you to be proud of me I always wanted that myself" sounds to me like he tells her just how important she is to him. and if she says "I always wanted that myself" it is as if she'd say "I wanted you to be proud of me" to her dad. so it doesnt mean that she wanted to be proud of her dad, but that she wanted her dad to be proud of her. that way it makes a lot more sense. infact it only underlines their relationship and how close they are. in the end the white horses are no longer "still in bed"; "All the white horses have gone ahead" means he left this world. in the very end she sings "never change": things might change and he is not around anymore but her love cannot be taken away. that way, things change but her feelings and memories do not change. ever. death cannot part people, it can even get them closer to each other even though it hurts that the person you lost is not around anymore.
this song reminds me of my dad. i wish he would have had the chance to tell me these things. everything happened too fast and totally out of the blue and..just too early. every time i listen to this song, i see both of us walking through a forest at night.
I know that Tori Amos wrote this song, and that there probably are influences from her childhood which shaped it, but I am not inferring that the child I am writing about below IS Tori Amos, particularly as these are only speculations on my part. <br /> To me, this is the description of a child’s transition into adult hood, but I wonder if in fact she remains untouched by anyone. The lines “Boys get discovered as winter melts, flowers competing for the sun” sounds very distanced, almost as though she never actually got a boy, and it’s the other girls, the “flowers” which are too hard to compete against “for the sun”. It suggests to me that she was too convinced of her own ‘ugliness’ and too shy to go out. I wonder if there’s a touch of bullying in her early years, that the “Sleeping Beauty” (and in my copy of the lyrics, it’s “TRIPS me with a frown”) is a metaphor for someone curtailing what she wants to do by some means or other, and this is the start of her feeling that she is not worthy in some way. The only happiness she remembers is the time just before that - “I get a little warm in my heart”, although her father is obviously a huge source of strength to her. <br /> I did see the white horses as a metaphor for time, as in when you’re a child, time moves very slowly, there’s everything ahead of this child, there’s plenty of time. And then suddenly, time has run out, the horses have not only left their beds, they have galloped past her and gone way into the distance. Reminisces of Stephen King comparing time to “My little Pony”. But yes, I agree that her father has died, particularly as I took the grey hair to be her own. The line about “I tell you that I’ll always want you near” suggests that she always wanted her father around to protect her, and perhaps has not coped with his death very well. <br /> “Mirror mirror, where’s the crystal palace” — it may be that she covered her childhood unhappiness with grandiose dreams of her being a princess and living in some crystal palace from which her Prince Charming would come and rescue her. An excuse for being cold and alone. However, when she grew up, such dreams could no longer cover up her problems, so she can’t see the palace any more, only herself. She still won’t look at herself directly, although there is a sense that she will no longer be able to avoid the confrontation for long — “The ice is getting thin”. Under the ice is the dark, icy water of reality which she is terrified of facing. <br /> In the end, though, things remains as they are and she has reached old age, all her dreams of being rescued and transforming herself have been shelved, she is accepting of her fate, and the only sense of regret we have is “You say I wanted you to be proud of me — I always wanted that myself” — this could be read two ways, but I felt it says that her father knew she wanted him to be proud of her — which he was, and continuously told her so — “When you gonna love you as much as I do” but she could never really accept that herself. It might be read that she was proud of herself, but “I…wanted” says to me that she never achieved it. <br /> A very depressing but beautiful song, and the “Never change” at the end seems to indicate that she effectively made sure that things never changed right up to the point of her death (the death of her father was perhaps something she could never accept, that in some ways he never died for her). Perhaps, if the white horses are a metaphor for angels, the last line is a reference to them coming at last for her. <br />
I would have to agree with you, Mary Jo. Beautiful interpretation and well thought out.
@mary_jo Good analysis, but I have another idea for the "never change" at the end: I think it comes from the father and have to be interpreted as "never change who you are, you are awesome as you are, so be yourself". It comes with the rhetorical question: "when you're gonna love you as much as I do".
@mary_jo I agree. I actually tucked the lyrics to this song into my father's casket when he died in 1999. This is exactly what I think it means. The White Horse is the spirit animal that comes to collect your soul in Native American mythology.
@mary_jo <br /> i think your interpretation is spot on.<br /> the fact that the horses are white only supports your theory that they symbolize death as white is commonly used in literature and other arts to describe something dead or of death (i.e. the white city in joseph conrad's 'heart of darkness', which is brussels of course).
"All the white horses are still in bed."\r\n\r\nI was thinking of the white horses as symbolizing the stereotypical prince on a white horse coming to the rescue, so I was thinking that maybe her father is telling her that she can\'t rely on waiting for someone else coming to her rescue - she needs to be able to fend for herself and be independent.