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"
Well she was a millionaire
Before she was fourteen
But there was an emptiness there
That to practically everyone else could be seen
She hit up on the drug of love
Though there was no hole in her arm
There was a hole some place else
About as big as daddy 10.000 acre farm
[Chorus]
Oh, she was dying for it
For all the world to see
Ah, she was as good as she could be
Well she had a baby at eighteen
Never finished high school
Her husband beat her for money and sex
Till that Cadillac finally ran out of fuel
One disaster led to another
Down to her and her baby son
Born with a silver spoon in her mouth
Headed south now
Cause she was never born to run
[Chorus x 2]
Well her momma died last year
And her daddy he called her back home
But when he opened the door
He could not recognize
This specter of hair and bone
But it was his own baby child
Though she looked like an old woman now
Well she lived ten lifetimes in five years
Anywhere that the law would allow
[Chorus x 2]
Yeah, she was good as she could be
Ah, she was good as she could be
Before she was fourteen
But there was an emptiness there
That to practically everyone else could be seen
She hit up on the drug of love
Though there was no hole in her arm
There was a hole some place else
About as big as daddy 10.000 acre farm
[Chorus]
Oh, she was dying for it
For all the world to see
Ah, she was as good as she could be
Well she had a baby at eighteen
Never finished high school
Her husband beat her for money and sex
Till that Cadillac finally ran out of fuel
One disaster led to another
Down to her and her baby son
Born with a silver spoon in her mouth
Headed south now
Cause she was never born to run
[Chorus x 2]
Well her momma died last year
And her daddy he called her back home
But when he opened the door
He could not recognize
This specter of hair and bone
But it was his own baby child
Though she looked like an old woman now
Well she lived ten lifetimes in five years
Anywhere that the law would allow
[Chorus x 2]
Yeah, she was good as she could be
Ah, she was good as she could be
Lyrics submitted by SongMeanings
Good as She Could Be Lyrics as written by John Hiatt
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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