This song was great fun to write, is great fun to sing, but is a bear to play, so I really never performed it anywhere. Even recording it I ditched the guitar for a simple piano part.
I grew up with a lot of Gilbert and Sullivan and the influence of Gilbert’s patter songs can be seen here.
Lyrics
Oh These Nights
Since she told me goodbye I don’t sit home and cry
‘cause I found if I try I can make the days fly
Spread my life all around running all over town
Making sure that my misery don’t get the best of me
I can recall in the past how I’d stall
And just stare at the wall feeling bad ‘bout it all
Let the sun never set, that would be the best yet
‘cause I safely can say that I don’t rue the day
It’s just
Oh, these nights
These long and lonely nights
These it ain’t no fun ‘less I’m someone’s
One and only nights
It will be all right
When I see the morning light
‘cause I got plenty of ways to make use of my days
But oh, these nights
If I lived in my brain it would drive me insane
So I try to refrain from these memories of pain
I avoid the obsessions and mental digressions
That lead to these sessions of manic depression
Instead I arrange for the kindness of strangers
To share in these healing reciprocal feelings
That works until they go and call it a day
And I start to depart from the art of the heart
And think
(cho)
In the daylight I see all the good sides of me
And I’m obviously all that I want to be
I don’t need her affection to give me direction
I’m loving my freedom now, I’m getting by somehow
That’s easy to say in the light of the day
But these two a.m. bouts with depression and doubt
‘bout the things that she said they just won’t leave my head
As I stare like the dead at that hole in my bed
And think
(cho)