I've always had a completely different 'interpretation' of this song. I don't know why, but this just came to me the first time I heard it and has stuck ever since.
In my version, it's a sad song where Jeff is not singing about himself and his girlfriend (as has been stated here as a fact which I accept by the way), but about an imaginary person. This guy is sitting on his own in a seedy bar, transfixed by this gorgeous girl who's singing on the stage. He's a sad and lonely kind of guy and this girl has totally fixated him. He really wants her to the point that he's having this huge fantasy about her falling in love with him. In his fantasy world, every other guy in the bar desperately wants her but she choses him. She's already noticed him and he's interpreted her glance as her having fallen for him - "Our eyes locked in downcast love, I sit here proud" and even wanting him sexually - "even now you're undressed in your dreams with me". He's getting quite worked up. He imagines she'll come over to him at the end of her set and more or less fall in love with him on the spot because "they all looks so good from a distance, but i tell you i'm the one". Then they'll go off into this beautiful future where they'll probably get married, definitely have loads of great sex and possibly even get to the point of having kids. All this is in his fantasy but it's so real he feels that he only has to sit and wait until she finishes her set and then it'll all happen - "I'll be waiting right here just to show you how our love will blow it all away". This fantasy is an antidote to his guilt and shame, "our guilt and shame" as he likes to think she shares this with him and they will rise together like embers.
It's funny to read that so many people find this song so sexy. I still can't get over this feeling of it being a wonderfully sad, seedy, desperate song of unfulfillable longing. I love it.
I've always had a completely different 'interpretation' of this song. I don't know why, but this just came to me the first time I heard it and has stuck ever since.
In my version, it's a sad song where Jeff is not singing about himself and his girlfriend (as has been stated here as a fact which I accept by the way), but about an imaginary person. This guy is sitting on his own in a seedy bar, transfixed by this gorgeous girl who's singing on the stage. He's a sad and lonely kind of guy and this girl has totally fixated him. He really wants her to the point that he's having this huge fantasy about her falling in love with him. In his fantasy world, every other guy in the bar desperately wants her but she choses him. She's already noticed him and he's interpreted her glance as her having fallen for him - "Our eyes locked in downcast love, I sit here proud" and even wanting him sexually - "even now you're undressed in your dreams with me". He's getting quite worked up. He imagines she'll come over to him at the end of her set and more or less fall in love with him on the spot because "they all looks so good from a distance, but i tell you i'm the one". Then they'll go off into this beautiful future where they'll probably get married, definitely have loads of great sex and possibly even get to the point of having kids. All this is in his fantasy but it's so real he feels that he only has to sit and wait until she finishes her set and then it'll all happen - "I'll be waiting right here just to show you how our love will blow it all away". This fantasy is an antidote to his guilt and shame, "our guilt and shame" as he likes to think she shares this with him and they will rise together like embers.
It's funny to read that so many people find this song so sexy. I still can't get over this feeling of it being a wonderfully sad, seedy, desperate song of unfulfillable longing. I love it.