Tenderness Lyrics
My luck's like a button - I can't stop pushing it
My head feels light but I'm still in the dark
Seems like without tenderness, there's something missing
Where is the
Tenderness
Where is it?
I open my mouth and out pops something spiteful
Words are so cheap, but they can turn out expensive
Words, like conviction, can turn into a sentence
We danced and danced
But I was scared to go much further with it
Just half a chance
Make sure that one night you're here
But next night you're not
It always leaves me searching for a little
Where is the
Tenderness
Where is the
Tenderness?
Calling up your girlfriend
Just trying to make her understand
You're squeezing the telephone like it was her hand
No question (so many questions)
She's going to catch you out, boy
It all seems so underhand
Now she's the only thing
That ever made you feel like a man, man
Madman, madman
Where is the
Tenderness
Tenderness
Tenderness
Where is it?
We danced and danced
But I was scared to go much further with it
Just half a chance
Make sure that one night you're here
But next night you're not
It always leaves me searching for a little
Where is the
Tenderness?
Why should the morning always find you unimpressed?
Is your love like a button, you can't stop pushing it?
Oh, this all night longing can be such a long time...
clearly one of the best songs ever.
effing amaze
Like, I'm with everyone that this is a song about a hookup being kept at arms length and questioning if sex alone is enough, however my gay-dar is off the charts with this song. I cannot see how this song could be about a man and a woman hooking up. People are reading "girlfriend" as "friend that is a girl" but I think everyone is just reading these lyrics from a super heteronormative place and not taking any other context clues (like the fact that he refers to the same person on the phone with a girlfriend as a boy apparently separate from himself).
I don't have it in me to analyze the song in its entirety at the moment, but the lines, "But I was scared to go much further with it," "Calling up your girlfriend/Just trying to make her understand," "So many questions/She's going to catch you out boy," and the line "Now she's the only thing that ever made you feel like a man," parts taken together seems, to me, to paint a picture of a guy wanting to hookup with this other guy he's dancing with but scared he's reading the situation wrong--maybe this guy isn't gay, and at the time this song was released this was even more dangerous a situation than it is now if he happens to get it wrong (see also: the line about his luck being a button he can't stop pushing).
Then he does end up leaving with the guy, though, and finds out he had a girlfriend and the guy has to call her on their walk home and explain why he's going to be out so late. The singer's perspective, then, is that this guy's girlfriend is going to figure him out at some point and that he thinks this guy is fighting so hard to keep this girlfriend in his life, despite him being interested in men, because she "makes him feel like man" (i.e. offers him masculine status that society generally denies gay men--she's a "beard," so to speak). The song then, overall, seems to be questioning how/lamenting the fact that this guy who seems to be attracted to men only ever hooks up with other men (due to his having a girlfriend to think of) rather than having the meaningful relationships/love/tenderness with men he probably would prefer.
If that isn't what this song is about, it damn well should be because that is a way more unique, complex, and important story than just yet another dude wanting to have sex with a girl but then catching the feels.
im with the other three posters when i say this song kicks so much ass.
check out the dude's hair its ridic
"So many threes after my less than sign for General Public and this song"
Amen!
boy meets girl at dance... falls in love but doesn't move on it... then tries to track girl down... phones her girlfriend to get some information about her... is at the mercy of whether or not she shows up at the dance club on a given night... is generally all mixed up and messed up over this girl that he may have missed his big chance with, and now does not know how or whether he will get a second chance.
sweet, innocent, optimistic, positive. great song.
i think this song is about ego and the mating dance between men and women- what is expected
the woman acts coy, and the man expects this because this is what society dictates ("make sure one night you are there, but one night you are not, always leaves me wanting...."
i think it is conflict, between what he knows is wrong- this deception and what is expected of him- which is to continue with this "ritual" and he might be saying to himself there is no tenderness in this "dance" but it makes him feel like a "man"
the deception could also be another woman-and fearing his girlfriend might find out (the second verse makes me suspect this)
maybe jumping from one thing to another- being beguiled by trickery and deception, knowing it but all the while going along with it because that makes him feel like a man-but in a twisted way though.
anyhow my take on the lyrics-
Suuuuuuuuuuuuch a good song...why has no one commented? So many threes after my less than sign for General Public and this song
Such a sweet song from the brat pack days... I'm surprised at the lack of comments!
okay..but whats it mean?
It is about "booty calls", trying to exchange sex for love. Trying to keep a Bootycall at arms length, kidding yourself that you dont really care, that it is just sex on the one hand, and from the other perspective knowing that it is just sex but being willing to take anything you can get from the person you really love, regardless of how they treat you,