Another thread inspired me to conduct a “poll” about the interpretation of song lyrics. I’m curious about how people interpret ambiguous song lyrics, and I’d love to hear other people’s take on a particular lyric.
The lyric I’m curious about is: “Won’t you let me go down in my dreams” from James Taylor’s “Sweet Baby James.”
So if you are familiar with the song, what is your interpretation of this lyric? What do you think it means in context of the song?
BTW, I’ve asked a number of my friends for thier interpretations and almost EVERYONE has a different answer. I don’t want to give my interpretation yet for fear of changing anyone’s answer. Furthermore it might work better if you didn’t read anyone else’s responses until you submit your own interpretation of the lyric.
I always thought it was just a reference to the idea that, in his dreams, he could be anyone, anywhere, doing anything. He could be with the women he speaks of in a neraby line (And as the moon rises, he sits by the fire, thinking about women and glasses of beer), or anything at all. In this sense, he speaks of dreaming, as does Shakespeare, in terms of escape from reality. Just MHO.
I don’t know each individual line in the song means, but I heard James Taylor tell Howard Stern that, while he was in Massachusetts one winter, he was working on a country-flavored song about a cowboy. Meantime, he got a phone call from his family in North Carolina, telling him that his new nephew (ALSO named James) had just been born. He got into his car, and began the long drive from Massachusetts to North Carolina, to see his family and the new baby, James.
As he drove, the cowboy/country song he’d started out with began to evolve into a lullabye for new baby James. Meanwhile, he was driving through Stockbridge and Boston, Massachusetts through the snow, on the way to North Carolina… and in the end, ALL those things worked their way into the final product!
So, as much as I love the song, it’s really a rather disjointed mess, lyrically! It’s a ballad about a cowboy, a lullabye for a baby, AND a description of a winters drive through Massachusetts!
The line about “going down in my dreams,” I suspect, is simply a way of saying “Sweet dreams” to a sleepy baby.
Perhaps I just have a dirty mind, but I think James has an earthy streak (in fact he’s kinda sexy), and I think he envisions pleasuring a woman orally when he says “let me go down in my dreams”… but maybe that is just wishful thinking! LOL
The story that James Taylor told on the Story Teller’s seires of VH1 is very much as astorian related it. The only difference that I remember is that JT also related that he was trashed (I’m not sure if he was drunk or doing drugs) he then paused and said “Its funny how many of my stories start that way.” That may have had an impact on the lyrics.
Hmm…I guess I’m not so much concerned with what he meant. I’m more interested in what others thought he meant?
For years I thought the lyric was a play on “Going down in legend” or “going down in history.” His lyric (“Would you let me go down in my dreams”) was an interesting bit of clever word play that turned it around and made it more self-referencing for the character in the song (or so I used to think). Until recently that had always been what I brought to the song, until one day it dawned on me that “going down in your dreams” could also mean “dying in your sleep.”
Anyway, I was hoping to find out what other people’s interpretations of this lyric were in the hopes of gaining more insight into the mysterious nature of how song ambiguous song lyrics are construed (and hence “personalized”) by other people.
I’ve always interpreted the chorus as being a sort of bedtime prayer. He compares it late in the song as a song sung by people who make their lving on the road or the seas before a long trip, a song about “their home in the sky”, i.e. a prayer. Instead of a prayer, he sings the chorus.
Goodnight, you moonlight ladies,
He’s saying goodnight to the cows he’s tending.
Rockabye Sweet Baby James
In the context of the song, the cowboy is referring to himself about to sleep for the night, and is asking for a peaceful night’s sleep.
Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose
Cool colors for the pleasent dreams he hopes to have.
Won’t you let me go down in my dreams
He’s asking to die (go down) in his sleep, while having the peaceful night’s sleep.
It seems my interpretation doesn’t match Mr. Taylor’s intentions, but that’s not unusual. I used to describe in great detail exactly how “Hotel California” was about drug addiction, until I read a Glenn Fry interview in which he says it isn’t about anything, and is meant to be perfectly ambiguous so that listeners can project their own meaning onto it.
I too always imagined that the Sweet Baby James in the song was James Taylor himself… I never knew anything about a new baby nephew… and that is why I just assumed he was “daydreaming” (or evening dreaming I should say), about all manner of pleasant images, from being rocked as a baby, to favorite colors, to sexual pleasure. I am not merely a “gutter mind”, I just always thought it was a song about fantasizing late at night while alone on a trip.
