♪♫ ♪ ♪♫

Cherry Lane
Ryan Adams & the Cardinals
Cold Roses
2005

I love when I have the opportunity to share an all-time favourite song with you and I am particularly excited to "give" this one to you; like a heart-shaped valentine.

This is one of those songs that I love right to the tips of my toes. I feel it in the roots of my hair, in the faint blue veins that show through the thin skin on the inside of my wrists, in the beat of my heart.

I am almost tempted to go through this song second by second because I love every last inch of it.

I like the instant wave of recognition that floods over me when I hear those opening chords. Like being reunited with something familiar. There is comfort in that familiarity. The country twang of Ryan Adams's voice singing the opening verse makes my heart flip

Every night I read this novel about you
Holding roses in the pouring rain
But the ending's tore up, trying to hail a cab
Think no one can read you, but I can

especially that last line. I like the sense of closeness it suggests. I like the idea of that closeness in general, now. Now that I am this new breed of head-over-heels-in-love person.

I didn't quite convey how much Ryan Adams I listened to in my early to mid-twenties in this post., but as I write today's post, I realize that he is an important part of my musical lexicon.  He writes beautiful lyrics.  And he I've always thought that he swears so assuredly.  I love everywhere this song goes. It doesn't stay still. I like that it sounds like this twisting, changing thing and Ryan Adams's voice shifts and changes with the music.

Like "Anybody Want To Take Me Home", I think that "Cherry Lane" uses repetition so well. The repetition of "I can never get close enough" affects me in that it almost hurts. It always has. I find that those words are part of the tangle of things stored in my brain, occasionally coming to the surface, completely out of context.  The female vocals that shimmer in the background, that rise and fall with Ryan Adams's voice are perfect; that, and the way the music builds, emphasize the beautiful, quiet urgency of the words:

"I can never get close enough"

something I am beginning to know very well.