Can't Go Back
Adele wrote this in the fall of 2005 after her sister Natalie died suddenly in May and Hurricane Katrina devastated our favorite place to visit in August. It was a rough year.
One of the un-checked items on our 2022 bucket list was one last trip to NOLA. This lyric means something very different to me because of that.
This is from Great Big Gone's Threadbare Heart CD recorded in 2008 at Miner Gleason’s home studio. Steve Watson’s pedal steel part is sublime.
Lyrics
I don’t miss the moonlight on the water
I don’t miss the sunshine through the trees
But the sound of her voice
Floats away from me
Slipped through my fingers like a breeze
Through my fingers like a breeze
It wasn’t always love sometimes it wasn’t even like
It wasn’t all that it could ever be
But it’s all that I knew
That I knew I had
It's all just been taken from me
Been taken from me
One last day in New Orleans
Not much to ask just one tiny little dream
If I could wake up
I could face the fact
That I can’t go on ‘cause I can’t go back
I can’t go on ‘cause I can’t go back
You won’t know what you have till it’s gone
Won’t see till you open your eyes
Now I’m looking around at
What I got left
And it’s leaving me stumbling blind
One more time I’d like to see her face
Sit and drink some coffee and just laugh
One last time so I could say goodbye
I can know that I can’t go back
Know that I can’t go back
One last day in New Orleans
Not much to ask just one tiny little dream
If I could wake up
I could face the fact
That I can’t go on ‘cause I can’t go back
I can’t go on ‘cause I can’t go back
I can’t go back
I can’t go
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