Here’s another “Conversation Song”! This is my ongoing series, started last week, in which I feature songs whose lyrics give us one side of a conversation, and we are left to infer the other half.
This week’s song dates from 1976, and the singing duo England Dan and John Ford Coley. It’s a pretty straightforward song: one person is calling the other and suggesting that they get together to, I don’t know, talk old times, maybe rekindle an old relationship.
The lyrics suggest that this is a former love affair, or at least some kind of relationship that ended in a one-sided fashion. For this person to call the other, they have to have not been in contact in a very long time, and there’s a winsome sweetness in the suggestions for a place to go: “We could go walking through a windy park”. The entire song is the suggestion of a get-together; none of the real conversation is in the song at all. But there’s a hint of seriousness in the bridge of the song:
… I won’t ask for promises
So, you don’t have to lie
We’ve both played that game before
Say “I love you”, then say “Goodbye”
Our singer is trying to keep expectations low, downplay the whole thing–but even here they are assuring the other that it won’t get that deep again, even though they’ve “both played that game before”, a game which involves both “I love you” and “goodbye”. One wonders why it’s been such a long time, and what really prompted our singer to pick up the phone. It can’t just be that “warm wind blowing the stars around”.
Here is “I’d Really Love To See You Tonight”, by English Dan and John Ford Coley.
England Dan is the brother of Jim Seals of Seals and Crofts. While I had a few of S&C, mostly because of the Okie, who was a Baha’i like they were, I had no ED&JFC