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- England Dan and John Ford Coley - I'd Really Love to See you Tonight
England Dan and John Ford Coley - I'd Really Love to See you Tonight
I don't want to change your life.
Chris Albrecht
October 01, 2024
England Dan and John Ford Coley’s “I'd Really Love to See you Tonight” is a perfect yacht rock song. There are plenty of reasons for this: the smooth, easy listening vibe, the suggestion to drive along the beach, the very 70s “I’m not talkin’ ‘bout movin’ in” approach to relationships. England Dan keeps his relationships casual. One of my favorite aspects of the song is the Bob Newhart (RIP)-style, opener, which features one half of a phone conversation. “Hello, yeah, it’s been awhile … not much, how about you?” Whether that’s genius or the duo just ran out of ideas, it doesn’t matter, you don’t get lyrics like that anymore (to be fair, texts with emojis probably wouldn’t translate, musically).
Speaking of the lyrics, the song also has the line “there’s a warm wind blowing the stars around,” which, while fun to sing, makes no sense. For years, I just thought I was hearing it wrong, and it was actually “a warm wind blowing, the stars are out,” which, okay, I can kinda see him pitching that as a romantic notion. But based on the Google, it’s “stars around.” Let’s set aside the physical impossibility, for a moment, of terrestrial wind impacting celestial bodies trillions of miles away. What is this supposed to even mean? It was 1975 in the recording studio, so I’m guessing it meant cocaine?
If they were to stay at home and watch TV, it would have been the 1975 - 76 TV season, so they could choose between hits like All in the Family, Laverne & Shirley, and The Bionic Woman. But I’m guessing neither England Dan nor John Ford Coley really wanted to go over and just watch TV, no matter how much they miss your smile. FWIW, the soaring guitar licks found in this song were way ahead of their time. That style of guitar found its way into plenty of 80s TV theme songs like Silver Spoons a few years later. Go ahead and fire up this song. And let the warm wind take you away.
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