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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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