In Steps

Underrated song.

I take the first part to mean that the relationship could have been so much more had there just been a prod, an emergency to force it. Instead what is left is just the memory, a hollowed shadow of what used to be.

Summer came too early. More time in the school semester or in spring would have brought it too fruition. Instead now, he has to wait until next semester or after whatever is going on to hopefully fulfill what was meant to be.

Everything in life happens in steps. Unlikely yet wishfully, this can too.

I agree it seems to be about spring/summer love that ended too soon or was just a fling. When the end comes, he will remember that love and how it made him feel so alive.

A beautiful, haunting tid bit of a song. It stirs the melancholy in me, that for certain.

I agree that it's about how when a relationship is waning, a sudden "emergency" can bring people back together, whether that emergency is real or self-created. But it's an echo of the past when you needed each other; it's hollow now. When the crisis ends, the distance re-appears. And yet he clings to hope of a second try, sometime in an idealized, unachievable summer that he knows will never happen.