Stranger

This song's lyrics and it's melancholy but upbeat melody capture the fear and excitement of leaving friends and a familiar place and traveling far away to pursue one's dreams. You can almost see the subject of the song looking out the plane's window in wonderment: "The streetlights looked so pretty/As they spread into a town."

The chorus echoes the feelings one has when wandering through a new town. One is overwhelmed by the new surrounding and possibilities in a way that will never occur again once that city becomes familiar ("And my head was spinning round and round").

But inside the unfamiliarity our subject meets someone who will become his lover: "Saw a crowd across the square/And I heard a guitar playin'/And I saw you standing there." It's a single line and not a theme that appears overtly in the remaining lyrics. But the conviction and tenderness with which Lynn sings this line would seem to indicate there is more to the encounter than the lyrics' simplicity reveals.

With love in his life the lowliness of the new town melts away ("And the place was full of loneliness/That disappeared from sight"). Slowly what was a strange place becomes familiar and in regards to his hometown, our subject confirms what he believed at the start: "I ain't never going back."

A gem of a song speaking of events I've lived through many times in my life.

It's about someone leaving their old life behind and beginning a new one. Perhaps this person is leaving to become a musician. He is a stranger in a strange land now. He does meet a person playing guitar, but they are a stranger to him. I keep thinking Jeff Lynn is writing mostly about himself and his experiences.