The message of the song is clear in all its verses but gets a little complicated with its chorus. It’s clearly about a failed love relationship. We discover it has failed in the last verse where the singer speaks of “Longing for you to come home.” The reasons for the breakup are the tribulations of the modern world that buffet modern romance, couched in shoreline metaphors (wind and waves): “All around the wind blows” and then the reference to the singer and the loved one’s need for “Standing strong as the waves roll over.” The romance begins in youth “not long ago”: “We would walk on the sidewalk/Innocent, remember?”/“But the night was warm/We were bold and young.” The singer also admits that the relationship, while caring, was fragile: “We would only hold on to let go.” That could mean the end of the relationship was sadly inevitable: our love would last (we’d hold on) only to finally end (we’d let go). But it might also mean that the lovers were only holding on in order to have fun (letting go). The really interesting part of the song is the repeated chorus: “Blow a kiss, fire a gun/All we need is somebody to lean on.” I especially like Collin McLaughlin’s version of the song (picked up for the Volvo commercial), because McLaughlin sets the first line of the chorus (“Blow a kiss, fire a gun”) in a background vocal before the singer boldly states, “All we need is somebody to lean on.” You can almost here a silent “BUT” between that first line and the line following. I think that the song is telling us we don’t need superficial shows of caring (blowing a kiss) and we don’t need acts of violence (firing a gun)—in defense of each other, I assume is meant; “All we need is somebody to lean on,” somebody there to care, a long-lasting caring that has permanence, strength, and stability. The singer does end on a note of hope in the questions “What will we do when we get old?/Will we walk down the same road?/Will you be there by my side?” But the nights are still long and the winds still blow. We still need "somebody to lean on."
The message of the song is clear in all its verses but gets a little complicated with its chorus. It’s clearly about a failed love relationship. We discover it has failed in the last verse where the singer speaks of “Longing for you to come home.” The reasons for the breakup are the tribulations of the modern world that buffet modern romance, couched in shoreline metaphors (wind and waves): “All around the wind blows” and then the reference to the singer and the loved one’s need for “Standing strong as the waves roll over.” The romance begins in youth “not long ago”: “We would walk on the sidewalk/Innocent, remember?”/“But the night was warm/We were bold and young.” The singer also admits that the relationship, while caring, was fragile: “We would only hold on to let go.” That could mean the end of the relationship was sadly inevitable: our love would last (we’d hold on) only to finally end (we’d let go). But it might also mean that the lovers were only holding on in order to have fun (letting go). The really interesting part of the song is the repeated chorus: “Blow a kiss, fire a gun/All we need is somebody to lean on.” I especially like Collin McLaughlin’s version of the song (picked up for the Volvo commercial), because McLaughlin sets the first line of the chorus (“Blow a kiss, fire a gun”) in a background vocal before the singer boldly states, “All we need is somebody to lean on.” You can almost here a silent “BUT” between that first line and the line following. I think that the song is telling us we don’t need superficial shows of caring (blowing a kiss) and we don’t need acts of violence (firing a gun)—in defense of each other, I assume is meant; “All we need is somebody to lean on,” somebody there to care, a long-lasting caring that has permanence, strength, and stability. The singer does end on a note of hope in the questions “What will we do when we get old?/Will we walk down the same road?/Will you be there by my side?” But the nights are still long and the winds still blow. We still need "somebody to lean on."