Lyrics 101: Talking in Your Sleep
Class has been our for quite some time, but it is time to educate you once again on lyrics that require further examination. Today’s subject is classic song “Talking in Your Sleep” by The Romantics. This song features some baffling questions which we will attempt to answer.
In the first verse, the singer informs the other person that “when you close your eyes and you go to sleep…I can hear the things that you’re dreaming about”. Then he admits “You tell me that you want me, you tell me that you need me, you tell me that you love me, and I know that I’m right, cause I hear it in the night”. He has a point, there, because everyone knows that whatever you hear at night has to be the truth. As the wise man Adam Sandler once said, “The Night time is the right time”.
The second verse is where things start to get a little confusing. He says “When I hold you in my arms at night…all the dreams that you keep inside, you’re telling me the secrets that you just can’t hide”. This begs a couple of questions. First, if he is holding her, then is it really a surprise that she wants, needs, and loves him? One logical explanation is that they are roommates and she is narcoleptic, and when she falls asleep while standing up, he catches her, and then she starts talking. But a more alarming possibility is that they are mere acquaintances, and he sneaks into her house, holds her while she is sleeping, and acquires all of this personal information without her consent. Sounds like a parental advisory sticker should have been slapped on this album, for this disturbing content.
Even more confusing, in the 3rd and final verse, the singer says “When you close your eyes and you fall asleep, everything about you is a mystery”. Huh? Hasn’t he just explained to us that he knows all of her secrets now, since she reveals them in her nocturnal state? Why is it a mystery? Perhaps he is saying to himself “She tells me that she wants me, she tells me that she needs me, she tells me that she loves me, but she doesn’t tell me that she feels for me, a la Chaka Khan. Maybe we aren’t meant to be…”. Looks like the singer has some more homework to do at night, although if she is a narcoleptic, really any time of the day will be opportunistic for him to find out more information.
I think it is safe to assume that the singer of The Romantics spent too much time staying up at night listening to this girl, and not enough time writing more hit songs, since this is the last we’ve heard of them. I hope that things worked out for him and his little narco (that’s the pet name we would use if we were in love with narcoleptic, although we know it could be confused with an undercover narcotics officer. It’s a risk we would be willing to take).
