Lines, Lyrics, and Love or Loss
Oct. 24th, 2025 02:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nyykiIt takes two points to define a line, of course, but without more information along that line there’s no knowing if it’s going to become a line segment, a ray, or something else. This is the most basic geometry, and it can be useful for other things.
Back in 1972 the band Looking Glass gave us the hit song “Brandy”, about a young woman who worked at a bar “serving up whiskey and wine” who is enamored with a particular ship’s captain who made it clear that he was never going to settle for a life on land. Some call this romantic, I don’t – I guess where she lived at that busy harbor there were no convenient windmills or something. Love can be wicked cruel sometimes to those trapped in it. From a narrative perspective this could go in any direction, but add another data point and there’s a line.
I realized that Double’s “Captain of Her Heart” can serve as that data point – it’s about a woman who can’t sleep because she’s haunted by dreams, and there’s a lot of nautical imagery in the song – “And with the new day dawning, she felt it slip away, not only for a cruise not only for a day.” Did Brandy come to terms with the reality that the man who gave her a locket “that bears his name” and its “braided chain of the finest silver from the north of Spain” wasn’t going to do what he said he’d not do, and as the day breaks and reality sets in she lets go of her infatuation and perhaps one-sided love. In my mind these two represent two points in the story very well.
The real question is if they represent the endpoints of that relationship – what we’re given about “Brandy” makes it clear some things have happened before the song begins, her meeting the captain in question and the other sailors commenting on her personality and beauty, but does something fit in-between these two songs, or is there something to do after she realizes that if she wants to find true love with a man (or person) who puts her first she’s got to leave that captain to the sea, and chances are excellent part of that disinvestment will involve giving up her locket to a drawer waiting to hold it.
I’d like to hear responses to this – can someone point out other songs that might fit in this line? I haven’t done a lyrical analysis of “Shattered Dreams” by Johnny Hates Jazz yet, but that might be something that fit in-between these two songs
Or is there an earlier song in the line? Perhaps somewhere else the captain finds a partner the sea can’t tempt him away from, or maybe he has a bad time of it. Tell me your ideas about this.
Back in 1972 the band Looking Glass gave us the hit song “Brandy”, about a young woman who worked at a bar “serving up whiskey and wine” who is enamored with a particular ship’s captain who made it clear that he was never going to settle for a life on land. Some call this romantic, I don’t – I guess where she lived at that busy harbor there were no convenient windmills or something. Love can be wicked cruel sometimes to those trapped in it. From a narrative perspective this could go in any direction, but add another data point and there’s a line.
I realized that Double’s “Captain of Her Heart” can serve as that data point – it’s about a woman who can’t sleep because she’s haunted by dreams, and there’s a lot of nautical imagery in the song – “And with the new day dawning, she felt it slip away, not only for a cruise not only for a day.” Did Brandy come to terms with the reality that the man who gave her a locket “that bears his name” and its “braided chain of the finest silver from the north of Spain” wasn’t going to do what he said he’d not do, and as the day breaks and reality sets in she lets go of her infatuation and perhaps one-sided love. In my mind these two represent two points in the story very well.
The real question is if they represent the endpoints of that relationship – what we’re given about “Brandy” makes it clear some things have happened before the song begins, her meeting the captain in question and the other sailors commenting on her personality and beauty, but does something fit in-between these two songs, or is there something to do after she realizes that if she wants to find true love with a man (or person) who puts her first she’s got to leave that captain to the sea, and chances are excellent part of that disinvestment will involve giving up her locket to a drawer waiting to hold it.
I’d like to hear responses to this – can someone point out other songs that might fit in this line? I haven’t done a lyrical analysis of “Shattered Dreams” by Johnny Hates Jazz yet, but that might be something that fit in-between these two songs
Or is there an earlier song in the line? Perhaps somewhere else the captain finds a partner the sea can’t tempt him away from, or maybe he has a bad time of it. Tell me your ideas about this.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-25 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-25 06:26 pm (UTC)I've not found anything about his inspiration, but it's a true one-hit wonder -- the rest of the album sucketh greatly. What he does with his vocal sound works for that song, but fails for the rest of the record. Judging by the production on the particular song it sounds like some producer marked "Brandy" as a hit and produced the hell out of it.
There's an eighteen minute of "Captain of Her Heart" on YouTube, and it makes a good background for mellow writing, but it's got a verse and a chorus and that's it for the lyrics; that said, the lyrics are evocative.