Songs are exactly like our lives – only understood from the end, looking back toward the beginning. The lyric comes from how the music is first felt. It has to fit the music first and foremost. Only after it is finished, and after much listening and introspection, can the song be understood in its complete essence. Now, in doing song forensics I keep finding all kinds of meanings, because when I wrote it, I didn’t over analyze it. I’m glad that I didn’t.

The title started an internal conversation about a younger version of my psyche at a time when one intends to find their first, and maybe last great love in life. Because the stakes get higher at some point for everyone, it is also a time to experience rivals, to investigate their game. As a younger man, I was nervous about the delicate nuances of love. There is ignorance, not knowing the level of difficulty involved because reciprocation is never assured, and this is fair as they say in love and war.

We may feel we have gifts that can only be revealed in time, but that is not how it works. Ask anyone who wants to be honest about it, but for the most part, especially when people are younger, it is much more primal and instinctual. If a young and smitten heart and mind believed in the idea that you could somehow convince someone that time and friendship and loyalty would make love grow into an intense physical relationship, that would really be foolish. Yet, this guy convinced himself that he and only he was the one to give her the love that she needed! Ouch! Gag! But I had to go through it. It is required. The triumph can still be more of a personal achievement, even when it seems like failure. The lesson itself is what lives on.


Actually, the real eventual love story I embarked on is more interesting and more complicated than that base feeling, or this simple song. Yet we all love the kind of love that is difficult, that isn’t easy or seemingly possible, but nonetheless cheer on the struggle to win true love in the end. Truthfully you have to be a little bit cracked up in the head! Over time we find out that no one really “completes” anyone.

Still this song is about that kind of love pursuit, and the emotion of a unique moment in time. To write this type of song you have to be willing to get on the rollercoaster ride of love relationships. More importantly, to sing it to an audience with conviction, for years to come, it has to have some deeper meaning over time. So it is quite a task to try to write one like that. Hopefully we have. Singing silly love songs never goes out of style because yearning for love remains universal. “The melting rainbow snow.”

The line "Stay close to my heart" in the final analysis is imploring us to stay in control of our own hearts, and not to throw everything away, because having a friend or many friends you can talk to, who care and are close in your heart, is a really positive thing in life.

In rejection, our hearts cannot be not brittle, they should be big and bouncy enough to love and include lots of people on many levels. Life would be so uninteresting if you couldn’t handle some rejection and reorganization. I hope that people learn this, I really do. Contact Sigh says that sometimes life goes in another direction. Keeping love brightly alive in all its unique forms is necessary for our survival and for enjoyment. It is integral to our humanity. "Stay, stay, stay…" We must roll with the punches and come to terms with everything to let love happen, and not just evolve but to strongly evolve, steering your heart ship through rough waters. “Arresting hibernation.” Keep love alive!

Finally, I think this song has another meaning during the last year – it has become about a lack of contact with people we love. We are being forced apart by a virus, and even worse when we can't be with loved ones in the final hours of their life. This interpretation is a very sad one to me, because I never would’ve guessed it could take on this meaning, yet it does now.

Mostly the song is a plea to keep learning and respecting our own ability to love and to be loved. “Come back again…”

Greg Franco
Los Angeles, 11/25/20