Goodbye My Lover (James Blunt)

Did I disappoint you or let you down?
Should I be feeling guilty or let the judges frown?
‘Cause I saw the end before we’d begun,
Yes I saw you were blinded and I knew I had won.

So I took what’s mine by eternal right.
Took your soul out into the night.
It may be over but it won’t stop there,
I am here for you if you’d only care.

You touched my heart you touched my soul.
You changed my life and all my goals.
And love is blind and that I knew when,
My heart was blinded by you.

I’ve kissed your lips and held your head.
Shared your dreams and shared your bed.
I know you well, I know your smell.
I’ve been addicted to you.

Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

I am a dreamer but when I wake,
You can’t break my spirit – it’s my dreams you take.
And as you move on, remember me,
Remember us and all we used to be

I’ve seen you cry, I’ve seen you smile.
I’ve watched you sleeping for a while.
I’d be the father of your child.
I’d spend a lifetime with you.

I know your fears and you know mine.
We’ve had our doubts but now we’re fine,
And I love you, I swear that’s true.
I cannot live without you.

Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

And I still hold your hand in mine.
In mine when I’m asleep.
And I will bear my soul in time,
When I’m kneeling at your feet.

Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

I’m so hollow, baby, I’m so hollow.
I’m so, I’m so, I’m so hollow.

The pain of losing someone you love can be so great it would sometimes feel like there’s no way you can recover from it. Waking up in the morning feels like a chore. You are angry with the world and probably even with yourself. Perhaps you regret not spending much more time with the person you lost.  You think of the possibilities of the situations you could have acted differently towards this person, things that you could have done better to have made both of your lives worthwhile. You wish in the deepest part of your heart that this person to return to you and you would be willing to do anything to make this happen. Alas, reality does not seem to care and so you brood even more.

James Blunt’s Goodbye My Lover is a dirge that makes a notoriously lethal cut into the soul. Its slow piano tempo and the passion of James’s singing voice conveys a profound level of immense agony. The haunting melody puts on a heavy weight into the hearts of anyone who listens to it. No amount of funeral flowers or poems can embellish the torment that the song imparts so effectively. Such is the impact of the song that this became the number one funeral song choice in the UK for a time, and it’s easy to see why.

While every single line in every stanza of this song can crush one’s entire being, let’s plunge right into the third stanza where it says, “You touched my heart you touched my soul./You changed my life and all my goals./And love is blind and that I knew when,/My heart was blinded by you.” If you are a person who’s ever loved another, you may have already said such lines to this person. The words used may sound cliché but when you think about it, there is no other possible way, given the limitations of human language, to express these kinds of feelings.

The sixth and seventh stanzas provide a more in-depth look as to the magnitude of the speaker’s relationship to his subject, “I’ve seen you cry, I’ve seen you smile./ I’ve watched you sleeping for a while./ I’d be the father of your child./ I’d spend a lifetime with you./ I know your fears and you know mine./ We’ve had our doubts but now we’re fine,/ And I love you, I swear that’s true./I cannot live without you.”. The lines just mentioned reinforce just how close they both were and so you can only imagine what kind of tragedy the speaker must have experienced when he had no other choice but to say. “Goodbye, my lover./Goodbye my friend./You have been the one./You have been the one for me.” It’s as if all the eloquence of all the other stanzas fell into nothing but repetitive and mundane stuttering when forced to face a reality of the speaker’s love being gone.

There is no redemptive ending to this song. It just closes with the speaker feeling, “..so hollow”.