Favorite Song No. 342: Simply Red – Holding Back the Years

I’ve wasted all my tears
Wasted all those years
Nothing had the chance to be good

For the most part, I’ve heard the hits of the ’80s more than enough times to last me my lifetime, but a few of them were either not quite overplayed, or such excellent songs, that I can still tolerate them today. “Holding Back the Years” falls into both categories. It hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1986, but I must not have been listening to the radio very much around that time, because I recall it as more of a song I’d hear every now and then than as one that was shoved into my ears repeatedly. More importantly, it’s such a beautiful song that even if I had heard it more than a few times I think I’d still want to hear it again today.

There’s not much more I feel I need to write about this song. I love it because it’s beautiful, and evocative of melancholy. Strictly speaking, the song is about a boy breaking away from a dominant father and leaving home,  while also missing a nurturing mother who walked out on the family when he was young, but like any great sad song, it’s vague enough, and includes powerful imagery, to apply to one’s own brand of sorrow. It’s easy to listen to it and think about lost opportunities, wasted time, unrequited love, and the ever-looming advent of old age, and to take solace in the beauty of the music. Why, it can just as easily be about wasting 12 years of your life on a girl who wasn’t worth it as it can be about breaking away from one’s father.