When the night comes she'll be here,
Lying down in my bed,
I have woken way before the dawn,
With all the things that she said;
On and on I hear gondoliers,
Passing in the dark,
It's another moment for the heart,
'Cos she means everything to me,
She means everything to me,
I know that I love her;
When the day comes she'll be gone,
From the one who will not see,
He doesn't love her, he doesn't love her any more,
But he will not set her free;
So on and on we've been like aeroplanes,
Passing in the night,
But there's no more hiding it this time,
That she means everything to me,
She means everything to me,
I know that I need her;
There comes a time when we must be,
With those we love,
And she means everything to me,
She means everything to me,
She means everything to me,
She is the one who gives me life,
She will be here with me tonight...
"This is a very short song, but it was a very complex lyric to write because I was trying to get the story across - and it's lot of little words that are hints about what the action is and where it's going on. But, basically, there's this man in Venice. It's dawn and he's awake and thinking about a girl who will be joining him later that night. Because it's Venice, of course it's gondoliers - so there's a word clue there! Anyway, it emerges that he and this woman have been lovers for a number of months, possibly years, except that she's been with another man - who does not treat her well, does not love her and she's found it very hard to escape from him. However, she's finally escaped and she's going to come down to be with this man. The line 'She means everything to me' is very important because, apparently, she means very little to this other man. So they've planned this meeting; he's gone down there to wait for her, she's joining him there - and then they're going to go off and ride into the sunset. So it's a very atmospheric song. The funny thing about this tune is that, usually, what happens is that the song writes itself - which is very frustrating! - but She Means Everything To Me actually came about because I've always loved the word 'gondoliers' in a song. I got this line 'On and on I hear gondoliers, passing in the dark.' And I thought 'Wait a minute... why? Why?', So I set my imagination to work from that. I thought 'OK, it's dark, it's gondoliers - what's going on here? It was kind of like being shown 30 seconds of a movie and having to work out what the whole film is about just from that brief clip. And, of course, if you show 30 seconds of a movie to anyone they're all going to come up with different movies at the end. That's art for art's sake, I guess, and that's what happened with this song; I just filled in gaps in an idea. It wasn't inspired by a real life situation, not that I know of, anyway, at all."
The Getaway Gazette, March 1992
Albums
"She Means Everything To Me" appears on the following albums:
