18 Meanings
Add Yours
Share
Q&A

Part-Time Lover Lyrics

Call up, ring once, hang up the phone
To let me know you made it home
Don't want nothing to be wrong with part-time lover

If she's with me I'll blink the lights
To let you know tonight's the night
For me and you my part-time lover

We are undercover passion on the run
Chasing love up against the sun
We are strangers by day, lovers by night
Knowing it's so wrong, but feeling so right

If I'm with friends and we should meet
Just pass me by, don't even speak
Know the word's "discreet" when part-time lovers

But if there's some emergency
Have a male friend to ask for me
So then she won't peek its really you my part-time lover

We are undercover passion on the run
Chasing love up against the sun
We are strangers by day, lovers by night
Knowing it's so wrong, but feeling so right

We are undercover passion on the run
Chasing love up against the sun
We are strangers by day, lovers by night
Knowing it's so wrong, but feeling so right

I've got something that I must tell
Last night someone rang our doorbell
And it was not you my part-time lover

And then a man called our exchange
But didn't want to leave his name
I guess that two can play the game
Of part-time lovers
You and me, part-time lovers
But, she and he, part-time lovers
Questions and Answers

Ask specific questions and get answers to unlock more indepth meanings & facts.

18 Meanings

Add your song meanings, interpretations, facts, memories & more to the community.

Cover art for Part-Time Lover lyrics by Stevie Wonder

Shouldn't we be discussing the meaning of the lyrics and not how much we like the song or not?

The song is about a guy whose cheating on his significant other, and finds out that she's also cheating on him.

Cover art for Part-Time Lover lyrics by Stevie Wonder

It is a great and (unfortunetly) true song! just love it! listen to it! listen to him! stevie wonder is the man!

Cover art for Part-Time Lover lyrics by Stevie Wonder

It's difficult to ascertain whether this song promotes adultery or condemns it. It sounds like a sarcastic commentary on "love affairs". Or perhaps he just doesn't care, and admits his own flaws for a seemingly perfect crime.

Cover art for Part-Time Lover lyrics by Stevie Wonder

It sounds like at the end of the song, the cheating spouse got his . . . but I was under the impression that it was the female part-time lover that was cheating as well.

Cover art for Part-Time Lover lyrics by Stevie Wonder

nicety, if you don't have anything nice to say about this song, the best thing to do is not give a s---. I never care about bands like Limp Bizkit. Anyways this is probablly the first song that got me into Stevie Wonder. and I'm 19.

Cover art for Part-Time Lover lyrics by Stevie Wonder

The interesting thing about this song is that in spite of the upbeat music, the whole adultery theme gets a very menacing treatment. There's a strong "it takes one to know one" message in the last part's description of how the adulterous man comes to realize his wife is cheating on him just as he's cheating on her. He knows he's doing wrong, as he acknowledges several times, but only now does the price he's going to pay for his infidelity make itself evident to him.

His line "I have something that I must tell" also strongly hints that he's kicking himself because he really should have seen this coming, but was too focused on keeping his wife unsuspecting to harbor any suspicion of her. Thus, his discovery proves to be the punchline to a very macabre joke: his infidelity has both blinded him and opened his eyes.

Of course, the humor in such irony is a lot easier to appreciate when somebody else is the butt of the joke. In the music video, Stevie Wonder merely provides the narration; four others act the parts of the cheating spouses and their partners in adultery, and in the end they're shown turning up at the concert where he's playing this song.

[Edit: ]

Song Meaning
Cover art for Part-Time Lover lyrics by Stevie Wonder

i havent heard stevie wonder singing this song. what ive heard is the cover that copeland did for this song :p nice though

Cover art for Part-Time Lover lyrics by Stevie Wonder

Nicety is a horrible little dog mess. YOU SUCK NICETY.

Cover art for Part-Time Lover lyrics by Stevie Wonder

I love this song...and Copeland did do a nice cover of this.

Cover art for Part-Time Lover lyrics by Stevie Wonder

Did anyone hear the kid on American idol sing this song? it was so amazingly terrible, but Stevie really put emotion behind it, so it was different