Great Songs from My Favorite Year in Music: 1985, Part 45

Simply Red - "Holding Back the Years"



(Single Release: 1985)
Every so often, a song hits the mainstream charts that I would never have expected. Over the last year, amongst the songs by Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, and Justin Bieber, there were also chart-topping hits by Mumford & Sons. I was both shocked and comforted. It made me wonder whether the same people were listening to all of these artists, or whether this was a unified rebellion by the people who don't usually listen to popular music, with usual eclectic tastes bonding together behind one band to have it infiltrate the mainstream. Somehow, I don't think it's that complicated, but it is nonetheless reassuring. Looking back to 1985, especially amongst the other entries I've made thus far on the blog, I would count Simply Red's "Holding Back the Years" as one of those surprising and comforting anomalies. It is a ballad in the older sense of the word, not a love song, but a narrative set to music, in this case downtempo and more than a bit melancholy. Mick Hucknall wrote the song when he was seventeen, his mother having abandoned him to live with his father when he was but three. "Strangled by the wishes of pater / Hoping for the arm of mater," he sings, though most listeners probably have paid scant attention to the meaning of the lyrics. This is one of a couple songs that make me feel sad about aging. I turn forty this year and it is becoming harder for me to cope with it. I remember turning thirty and hearing another song that always makes me feel sad about aging, Blur's "The Universal." Ten years later and I am no better at coping. But, like every well constructed song, it can be enjoyed without that lyrical dimension. The piano and horns, especially during the bridge, are soothing and reverent of an organic kind of music that was considered passé in the 80s. Hucknall's voice is full of passion. There are only a few voices in popular music I would consider transcendent. Alison Moyet, Marvin Gaye, Jeff Buckley, Robert Plant, Freddie Mercury, Tom Waits, and David Bowie are in that group, and I'd say that Hucknall is not too far behind. His belting of "holding" is certainly powerfully captivating. Just a few short years ago, I was in a small local grocery at the checkout and this song was playing on the overhead system. The somewhat sassy clerk looked up at the speakers, then looked at me with a puzzled expression. "Man, how long has he been holding on? It's time to let go..." I'll always remember that exchange whenever I hear the song and also use it as a way to make myself smile and get over the passing of time. As Damon Albarn sang, "When the days they seem to fall through you, well just let them go."