Day 1: Golden Lady

 

 

I listened to this song the other day while driving back from New Orleans, and by the time the solemn piano intro gave way to the hopeful rhythmic stirrings and cosmic synth flutters of the song proper, I had tears in my eyes. The kind of tears that only music can evoke, like getting the chills while also experiencing a warmth of deep-seated memories and emotions. My mom gave me "Innervisions" for my 16th birthday, the year I was first able to drive, a year I first started keeping a secret notebook of poetry, and I remember pouring my high school crushes into this song. "I'd like to go back," Stevie sings to the titular Golden Lady of this song, suggesting he's now on the outside of an experience he'll always long for but will never be able to return to. When you're young and experience romantic love in glimpses and hints rather than in any obtainable reality, a song like this really resonates. And I can only imagine how futuristic those synths must have sounded in 1973. I'd like to go back, too, even if I was never really there.