When I looked at the list of winners of the Grammy Album of the Year Award (an action that I choose to describe as ‘research’) there was, for me, only one standout candidate for my contribution to this week’s Song Lyric Sunday challenge. It had to be Carole King’s 1971 winner ‘Tapestry’. The fact that Jim has also selected a track from this classic is testament to his excellent taste (and perhaps, by extension, mine too).

We arrived independently at our decisions though, and fortunately also chose different songs. Tapestry – the album itself – was a staple of what I still think of, rather quaintly, as our courting days. This particular song has always been especially poignant as at the time I was at university at the other end of the country and, after we were married I spent a long time either working at the other end of the country or on the road (in the air to be more accurate).

So far away
Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore
It would be so fine to see your face at my door
Doesn’t help to know you’re just time away

Long ago I reached for you and there you stood
Holding you again could only do me good
Oh, how I wish I could
But you’re so far away

One more song about moving along the highway
Can’t say much of anything that’s new
If I could only work this life out my way
I’d rather spend it being close to you

But you’re so far away
Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore
It would be so fine to see your face at my door
Doesn’t help to know you’re so far away
Yeah, you’re so far away

Traveling around sure gets me down and lonely
Nothing else to do but close my mind
I sure hope the road don’t come to own me
There’s so many dreams I’ve yet to find

But you’re so far away
Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore
It would be so fine to see your face at my door
And it doesn’t help to know you’re so far away
Yeah, you’re so far away
Hey, you’re so far away

Written by Carole King

Song Lyric Sunday 10 October 2024