10 Songs That Will Reduce An Open Heart To Tears: #8

If there’s ever been musical progression that immediately conveys yearning and the bittersweet, hard, cold beauty of love lost more than this, I haven’t heard it.

It’s funny, because writing about this song almost seems to me to be precisely what the song is about; there is no way to convey in words that which is so powerfully felt, and you try anyway but it’s impossible.

I can think of no other song that so accurately captures the feeling of unrequited love, or love that exists between two people but which simply cannot be fulfilled in the real world.

And it’s interesting to me that someone with a voice that is so rock solid – I think of Cat Steven’s vocal delivery much in the same way as I regard Nick Drake’s guitar playing; flawlessly sturdy, technically perfect – that a singer with a voice of this particular character can convey this depth of tenderness, as he does in all of his best ballads.

You, as the listener, get lost in it – identify so deeply with it – because he is so lost in it.

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