My Thief

I've been meaning to blog about this song since last October but the idea fell by the wayside with time. Today, though, it turned up on iTunes and it seemed a perfect moment to write about it.

My friend, D, was the one who introduced the song to me, describing the lyrics as "gut-wrenching" and telling me how they hit him hard every time he listens to the song. I was impressed.

So I watched the video and succumbed even before the song began - Elvis Costello introduces the song briefly, but so expertly, speaking of it as a story. And the best songs are really riveting stories set to music, the ones that leave you thinking and wondering long after the singer is done with the last line. This song is one of them, melancholic and full of yearning - the kind that comes only from loss - but what I love best about it is the woman's point of view, her voice that comes in at the end, like a coda.

Someday, the man may find his own coda. And that would mean giving up the dream he has each night, the very thing, as Costello says, "that's all that's left of her."

*edit: Uncannily, on the day I choose to write about this song, D writes to tell me a little about his life. Perhaps, then, this post is meant for him, who, I just learned, is finding the song more wrenching than ever.

My Thief, by Elvis Costello

Posted by Monoceros at April 8, 2009 11:02 AM