Ghosts

How can this not have any comments yet? This is Robbie's best work since Angels. It's stunning!

I agree XtinaB! It's a very simple and catchy song. Do you know who "Josephine" is? And what's with "They're taking down our satellite"? Tom.

I've no idea who Joesphine is but I think the satellite bit is some kind of reference to David Bowie. Robbie's new album is quite 80s.

Oh yeah and this song is meant to be a sequel to the Human League song Louise- it's supposed to be Louise's response to that song.

This is a great opener to Intensive Care, it's simple indeed but at the same time holds such a nice melancholy that makes it really emotive and touching for me. Maybe because of the subject of the song, which I think is having come to terms about how time went by while you are still attached to an old love you couldn't get completely over, even when you both have moved on. The line "it looks like we could have made it" hooks me, it probably makes me think about my past decisions in life, what if we had put our effort and priorities to make it work instead of giving it up so quickly? Maybe we would have screwed it up, but we wouldn't be still thinking about each other and what we "could have been if we...". Ghost always reminds me of those past choices and how they affected my life. And how sorry I am lately.

Can't believe the lack of comments. He really needs to release this song- it's his best ever, forget Angels!!!!

I agree with the comments about how good this song is. Really underrated and hard to believe the by-the-numbers 'Place to Crash' was released as a single instead.

I remember reading a bit about the writing of this song in the book 'Feel'. The chorus originally had lines like 'in the fairgrounds and the coffee shops' IIRC in the soft-spoken bits that became 'a long long time ago'. I think the jist was that when you remember a relationship, you tend to visualise specific moments and places and remember them vividly almost like you're trying to relive it; then you have to catch yourself and face up to the reality that those people, at least as they existed and felt at the time, are dead - ghosts. I think there's also something of a double-meaning to the term, as Robbie/the narrator seems haunted by these memories and regrets about what could have been - he's become hollow and joyless, in essence a ghost himself.

It's interesting the way the song alludes to other heavenly bodies like stars and satellites towards the end. The way I see the 'satellite' line is that when we're young or in a particularly intense relationship we tend to idealise love and treat it as some amazing, other-worldly thing. The satellite is what's used to discover the mysteries of all the things in the universe we wonder at and don't understand. Now that the man is a hollow shell who's been burned by love, he's given up hope of ever trying to reach or understand these things - 'they're taking down our satellite'. 'I'll follow your star tonight' seems like a last desperate clinging to something out of reach and intangible.

This might be completely off-target, but I always thought that the lines

"Josephine I'll follow your star tonight We are ghosts If not tonight"

were a reference to Napoleon and his wife Josephine - you know the famous line, "Not tonight, Josephine"? I thought that because of the "if not tonight" part. And the fact that they died only about a year apart I thought made the line "WE are ghosts" also relevent.

I think that the song's about a man only just realising how far him and the one he loves have come, and yet how much he has taken for granted.