Explain these Spandau Ballet lyrics. No, really.

Cafe Society
1

For reasons which are too long to get into and not really important anyway, I’ve spent way more time than I’m prepared to admit watching the video of the 1984 Spandau Ballet hit, “Only When You Leave” , on youtube over the last 3 days or so.

I’m puzzled by some lyrics which, as far as I can tell after some googling, seem at one stage to go:

“Only when you leave, youll leave in danger
Oh I’ll make sure that you pay
So give a little passion to a stranger
And take this soul away”

My track record of is one of severe challenge in the field of song lyric comprehension, so it may be that I am missing some really obvious interpretation of these lyrics which would explain them logically but I am just not sure what they’re saying here. OK, so she’s leaving him and he’s not happy. He pledges to make her “pay”, which presumably is why she’ll be “in danger”. It all sounds a bit sinister so far… Then what? I’m just not getting how the third/fourth lines follow on from there.

I am willing to deploy the forehead-slapping smiley if any folks can 'splain it for me.

2

You mean that you usually CAN makes sense of song lyrics? Most of them are as meaningless as this one, to me.

3

Sorry for dodgy link. Try this 'un instead.

4

As Usram says, there may be no answer.
Certainly, for example, Don Mclean has refused to explain ‘American Pie’, while a poster here claimed ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was about shopping. :eek:

I usually find some interesting stuff here, but it doesn’t have your song. :smack:

Wikipedia doesn’t seem to have anything on that song either and the Spandau Ballet message board is currently closed. :confused: