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Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Favorite Songs - Cold Dark and Yesterday by Hall & Oates



(Are there some songs that never get old for you? You can listen to them over and over again, even after you've just listened to them, and you still enjoy them? When they also make you think about interesting and important stuff, you get the kinds of songs I'm talking about in this series of blog posts.)

Here's one I'm pretty sure most of you have never heard, but it's up there in my top five or ten of songs that never get old for me.

Daryl Hall and John Oates grew up in the same area I did and the I saw the abandoned luncheonette on the cover of their second album twice a day as I rode the bus to and from school. And you could say I also grew up on their music, since it was very popular in my youth (maybe especially because they were from the area).

I've always loved the music in "Cold Dark and Yesterday" (a rare track written and sung by Oates), but later in my life the lyrics have also become very meaningful (they're reproduced below). The song has the effect on me that I presume is the intention of all "blues"--to commiserate via the lyrics but lift our spirits with the music.

Lately I've often thought that there are two kinds of people in this world--those who know what it's like to feel extreme pain over past mistakes and those who don't. For fifty years of my life I was the latter, but in the last few years I've become the former. Only those who have failed miserably and publicly can really understand and empathize with the lyrics of this song, so the rest will just have to enjoy the music.

But for those who do understand, and experience the daily chills of regret and consequences for past failures, here's some hope. Just yesterday (no pun intended), my dear wife sent me this devotional written by Oswald Chambers, the author of My Utmost for His Highest:


Make sure to always add encouraging words like that to your mind when you have thoughts and feelings like the lyrics in this song...

Cold Dark and Yesterday

The sun beats down so slow
I feel my body heating up inside
I watch danger zone
For signs of life but not a soul alive
Try every trick I know
To keep my temperature from blowing sky high
Check on the time to go
I lay my spirit down and fantasize
Disembark disconnect possibilities unknown
On the edge of a heading for heavy weather
I suspect I can tell I can feel it in my bones
All not well but you never never never know

Cold and it's dark
It's cold and it's dark
I'm feeling cold
Cold and it's dark, yesterday
I feel the chill is all around me
Cold and it's dark
Just like the space in my heart
It's cold and it's dark
And it's yesterday

Glamorama all around me
Friendly natives turning back to brown
I keep my shades well down
They cannot penetrate what can't be found
I feel the fever start to rise
Slip away in indiscreet disguise
How can a man survive when the weak meets the soft
And the heat blind your eyes
Left to right up and down its picture postcard time

Hear the sound save the image in my mind

Cold and it's dark
It's cold and it's dark
I'm feeling cold
Cold and it's dark, yesterday
I feel the chill is all around me
Cold and it's dark
Just like the space in my heart
It's cold and it's dark 
And it's yesterday