This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
Driving back from Calabasas
Grass roots roads are all I know
Wait for moonlight to dance with the hills
Leave your hotel for the ocean sill
Come and purchase all the riches
You can find and hold our homes
I will love you no matter the time
We will swing from carousel lights
Take what you need from the words I leave
From the windowsill and blue concrete
If the roads weren't long in the southern states
We would stretch our legs in Oregon gray
Radio and highway lines
Are all I have to keep the pace
Don't you worry we will find a way
To stretch tomorrow into today
Take what you need from the words I leave
From the windowsill and blue concrete
If the roads weren't long in the southern states
We would stretch our legs in Oregon gray
Take what you need from the words I leave
From the windowsill and blue concrete
If the roads weren't long in the southern states
We would stretch our legs in Oregon gray
Take what you need from the words I leave
From the windowsill and blue concrete
If the roads weren't long in the southern states
We would stretch our legs in Oregon gray
When the neon lights will frame our fog
We will leave it all, we will leave it all
If the sun won't set in the road ahead
I will leave this car and drive instead
Grass roots roads are all I know
Wait for moonlight to dance with the hills
Leave your hotel for the ocean sill
Come and purchase all the riches
You can find and hold our homes
I will love you no matter the time
We will swing from carousel lights
Take what you need from the words I leave
From the windowsill and blue concrete
If the roads weren't long in the southern states
We would stretch our legs in Oregon gray
Radio and highway lines
Are all I have to keep the pace
Don't you worry we will find a way
To stretch tomorrow into today
Take what you need from the words I leave
From the windowsill and blue concrete
If the roads weren't long in the southern states
We would stretch our legs in Oregon gray
Take what you need from the words I leave
From the windowsill and blue concrete
If the roads weren't long in the southern states
We would stretch our legs in Oregon gray
Take what you need from the words I leave
From the windowsill and blue concrete
If the roads weren't long in the southern states
We would stretch our legs in Oregon gray
When the neon lights will frame our fog
We will leave it all, we will leave it all
If the sun won't set in the road ahead
I will leave this car and drive instead
Lyrics submitted by tikilights, edited by BillPDX
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I think it's "We will swing from Carousel Lights, actually.
and I want to know what "If the sun won't set in the road ahead I will leave this car and drive instead" is supposed to mean? Is it--if the world stops turning he'll go anyway? why would he leave the car only to drive? what's he going to drive if he leaves the car?
I really love this song anyway, I love the stanza, "Radio and highway lines Are all I have to keep the pace Don't you worry we will find a way To stretch tomorrow into today"
really awesome.
I love this song too. I like to think that he comes from Tallahassee (from 'to travels and trunks'), driving west through California, so he's messing when he says "if the sun won't set in the road ahead", because he knows it will, and that they will keep on driving. This song is probably the best road trip song I've ever heard...