Naples, Florida. 2015. By Paul Goldfinger ©
SIMPLY RED “Every Time We Say Goodbye” from his album Simplified
This is one of my all time favorite songs. Words and music by Cole Porter for a stage show in 1944.
The lyrics are appreciated viscerally and down to your soul. One of the cleverest lyric lines in music occurs when it goes, “There’s no love song finer, but how strange the change from major to minor, every time we say goodbye.”
If you listen carefully you might be able to appreciate the change in chord progression during that line from A flat major to A flat minor—a brilliant musical moment where the music and lyrics match exactly and the meaning is deepened by the chord change.
Thanks, Paul. Enjoyed the commentary and the song. I imagined my parents saying goodbye as Dad left for WWII and I was “in the oven.” Very meaningful song for many Americans.