The most as you'll ever go
Is back where you used to know
If grown-ups could laugh this slow
Where as you watch the hour snow
Years may go by
So hold on to your special friend
Here, you'll need something to keep her in:
"Now you stay inside this foolish grin"
Though any day your secrets end
Then again
Years may go by
You saved your own special friend
'Cause here you need something to hide her in
And you stay inside that foolish grin
When everyday now secrets end
Oh and then again
Years may go by
Is back where you used to know
If grown-ups could laugh this slow
Where as you watch the hour snow
Years may go by
So hold on to your special friend
Here, you'll need something to keep her in:
"Now you stay inside this foolish grin"
Though any day your secrets end
Then again
Years may go by
You saved your own special friend
'Cause here you need something to hide her in
And you stay inside that foolish grin
When everyday now secrets end
Oh and then again
Years may go by
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;-)ZachZ;-)
I wondered what the song was about and appreciate bb6634's comments about childhood. It makes the song even better to understand that.
One of my own strongest memories of childhood is spending a hot, windless afternoon in a field near my house. Lying down and watching at ground level as insects went about their lives, and being drawn into that miniature world for a while in a way that made time seem to stop. There was certainly something magical about it, and even now it seems more 'real' in some sense than much of what has happened to me today. That seems to me to be what Jones is saying here - and she also describes that ways in which we can actively seek to capture moments like that: "So hold on to your special friend/Here, you'll need something to keep her in/Now you stay inside this foolish grin".
In closing, I'll note how badly dating a song in its title or lyrics can date it, or make it seem irrelevant to later generations. How easy is it now to empathize with Gary Moore's Parisienne Walkways - Paris in 1949 - or Frankie Valli's Oh What A Night ("Late December back in '63/What a very special time for me?" Luckily for me, I was born in April 1963, so Jones's song has a special sort of resonance for me, but it would be a shame to think it might go unnoticed by those born much more recently.
Maybe anyone here can explain those expressions to me? Not being a native english speaker it's kind of difficult to truly get the meaning of lines like that :-/
“If grown ups could laugh this slow” - everything seems so slow when you are a child. You haven’t lived as long so waiting for anything feels like forever and you can grow impatient of things like adults taking their sweet time
“You stay inside that foolish grin” - directed toward the writer’s “special friend”. Something you hide behind a smile (maybe a secret) or within a smile (maybe your inner child/sense of wonder/enthusiasm)
The sadness of the lyric is that while it captures the child's attitudes and mind-set ("Here, you'll need something to keep her in: / 'Now you stay inside this foolish grin'"), years have indeed gone by. The singer has grown up, and the secret is still a secret. What was a game for the child is now a fact of life. In the world of "grown-ups', you need to put on a face to meet faces with (to steal a phrase from T.S. Eliot). Hypocrisy is required by society, even while it ostensibly frowns upon it. And that means that we all have to contend with a dreadful solitude.
Jones is a truly remarkable singer.
I enjoyed reading your comments on this lyric, even though the years have gone by since you posted them.
Mike Marais, Grahamstown, South Africa
I hope that your gig went well, and that both you and your audience enjoyed your cover of "On Saturday Afternoons".
Good luck with the rest of your life.
Some reminiscence.
From her first album.
Lots of good songs on it, as well as this one, e.g. 'Night Train', 'Young Blood', 'The Last Chance Texaco'.
Our childhood imagination/wonder and inner monologue are kind of like secrets that we keep with ourselves. Secrets end if they are forgotten about and go untold. Reminds me of the silver bells on Polar Express that couldn’t be heard by children as they got older because they didn’t “believe” anymore, or how the toothfairy in the movie Toothless could only be seen by those that still had baby teeth. Common theme being loss of innocence.
Side note: it’s so cool to see different comments and interpretations from others that have been left here over the years, especially given the meaning of the song and how it emphasizes how quickly time can escape us.