turns to inspiration. This is the territory of Sophie B. Hawkins’ remarkable sixth album, which is at once the most directly personal, musically transporting and defiantly raw work yet from the Grammy nominated
singer/songwriter.
Since her instantaneous 1992 breakthrough with the indelible hit single “Damn I Wish I Was Your
Lover” and her acclaimed debut album Tongues and Tails, Hawkins has proved an enduring artist with a fierce commitment to constantly evolving, while remaining steadfastly true to her own authentic history and experience. This comes to the fore as she breaks open her heart without reservation on The Crossing, her longawaited first album of new songs in several years. It is a searing, lush and startlingly naked chronicle of the most intense period of Hawkins’ life, in which she has come to terms with her father’s death, openly surrendered to the haunting specter of her past, discovered the exhilaration of motherhood and arrived at a profound reckoning of acceptance. All of this emerges in songwriting and vocals that mix the brashly playful and the unabashedly poignant in fresh ways for Hawkins.
“I was really reaching for somewhere new as I wrote these songs,” she explains. “It all started with
getting a letter from my sister that my father was dying – and, in a way, that opened up not only struggle and emotion but all these opportunities for healing. I had to acknowledge that I’d never be able to heal the abyss created by my parents’ alcoholism. I had to say this is how it was, this is how it is with me now and surrender to the grace of that. These feelings have always been there in my writing but it’s like I always kind of danced around them in my songs and now I was ready to go head-on into them. The songs began to express a kind of eternal dream I’ve had, that I think we all have, for a moment of peace and clarity, for the ability to get beyond our personal struggles and move out into the larger world -- knowing exactly where you stand in it.”
The eleven songs on her upcoming album, The Crossing spilled out of Sophie B. Hawkins in a way she had never experienced before in a lifetime of diverse and critically admired songwriting – yet were so closely entwined with her very being, she confesses they felt at first like secrets that needed to be kept. “I didn’t play these songs to anybody, not a soul, for a long time,” she acknowledges. “But as I wrote, I developed deeper and deeper roots of strength. I felt it was time to do something that might scare me. And what I love about these songs is that they are very, very emotional but they aren’t filled with baggage. There’s something very unconscious about them, a letting go, and they seem to bring people a lot of joy.”
Hoping to sustain the stripped-bare honesty of how the songs were written, Hawkins created the album
in a sonically hand-made way – recording entirely in her home studio and keeping the sparse, spontaneous immediacy of a demo-like sound. She engineered the album herself. “The album is entirely me with just drums, bass, guitar and flugel. I didn’t hire a band – I just would meet one musician at a time and have them come to the house to record and it was a very spacious and organic process. I became an engineer really by instinct. I kept things very simple and told the musicians to just have fun. It felt like it unfolded all on its own -- I really wanted to retain the feel of these songs that were written completely in the moment and I think we did. I felt lucky just to be there watching this be created.”
The tracks on The Crossing have that rare quality of feeling like an expedition underneath a human
skin, revealing a woman who has dragged wisdom and strength from a lion’s den of complicated relationships and life experiences. The journey ranges from the feisty “Bet Ya Got A Cure” which Hawkins calls “a personal, guttural response to everything I’ve seen and a reminder that we’re all too easily lulled by what’s easy instead of the parts of life that require you to be really brave”; to the powerful testament “Heart and Soul of a Woman,” an ode to feminine strength (in all forms) which Hawkins notes was inspired in part by her experiences working on Hilary Clinton’s historic Presidential campaign; to the fluid, crescendoing “Life Is a River,” which Hawkins says is about the idea “that you don’t really know who you are until you’re challenged.”
Some of the most personally revealing tracks include “Missing,” an impassioned reckoning with the dark
truths of her past that Hawkins says is about that “really simple dream of coming to the purest place of common ground with someone no matter what went on before. It also has this great feeling for me of New York in the springtime.” She makes a bold, no-holds barred declaration of independence in “I Don’t Need You,” then turns reflective in “Red Bird,” which was written after a friend was hit by a car and Hawkins muses “is about those moments when you have to move on, even though you don’t necessarily want to leave where you are, you can’t help but go forward.” Then there is “Dream Street & Chance,” a jazzy, modern torch song about possibility and acceptance. “There’s a lot of personal symbolism in that song,” notes Hawkins. “When I talk about the weatherman’s castle it goes back to me wanting to be a weatherman as a child, which my father used to tease me about. The song goes back to the idea of a sacred childhood, which is a part of being human no matter what your experience with childhood is, and which I think is the source of all creativity.”
Evocative themes weave throughout the album from innocence and the purity of love in “A Child” (which
morphs into Hawkins’ sultry take on “Summertime And The Living Is Easy”) to the human need for the natural world in “The Land, The Sea and The Sky” to the brassy rebelliousness of youth in the sexy, sunny, straightahead pop song “Georgia.” Hawkins also collaborated with Academy Award®-winning actress Mary Steenburgen on the heart-felt, Joplinesque folk ballad “Gone Baby.” “I met Mary at a Clinton rally and in the middle of everything she mentioned that she wrote songs,” Hawkins recalls. “Later, she sang one of her songs to me over the phone and she was like a lone wolf in the desert. I felt that the song was all there, it just needed to be developed. It turned out to be a great partnership and I got so much out of working with her.”
In the end, the album became to Hawkins a kind of line in the sand: “These songs were written right on
that border between transcending the person I used to be and opening up to something new, to realizing I’ve come to a place where I can bring more love, more passion and more energy to my life and creation. It’s an acceptance of where I’ve been and a declaration of where I’m standing I am right now.”
In the middle of writing the songs for her new album, Hawkins received an unusual chance to take an
artistic left turn. Hawkins was asked by her longtime manager and acclaimed filmmaker, Gigi Gaston, to join her in pitching a musical Gigi had been working on with Kristin Chenoweth, the Tony & Emmy award-winning singer and actress (Glee, Pushing Daisies, Wicked), in which Chenoweth would star. The musical had deep roots, having been started by Gaston’s mother, Theodora Lynch, in 1950, and now the three women were inspired to bring an extraordinary story back to life. A fan of Hawkins’ music, Chenoweth asked Sophie to write the new music & lyrics for a book by Gaston and Tony-award winning Broadway legend Thomas Meehan (Annie, The Producers, Hairspray), who joined the project as co-writer soon after.
“When Gigi, my manager first approached me about writing a Broadway musical, I thought ‘there’s no
way,’“ Sophie laughs. “It was completely outside anything I’d ever done, but at the same time, I’ve always loved musicals and some of my favorite songwriters and singers come from the theatre world, which has had a huge influence on me. I started to think that just maybe I had it in me.”
After that fateful first meeting between Gaston, Chenoweth and Hawkins, the journey began.
Tentatively at first, Hawkins began writing with Gaston, then further collaborating with Meehan. It was a fresh and creative adventure that became a perfectly timed yin-yang contrast to Hawkins’ work on the album.
“It has been a grand experiment and a lot of hard work but it was also an amazing opportunity to
explore a completely different creative process,” Hawkins explains. “Here I was writing these intensely
emotional songs for the album, so working on the musical became a welcome release from that. It wasn’t about me, it was about fictional characters and the arc of telling a dramatic story -- and I could immerse myself in that in a whole different way. It’s a more intellectual way of writing, but it also became more unconscious and poetic as it went along. It was also great for me because I have rarely collaborated lyrically with anyone and it was very interesting to work with other people’s ideas and themes. I was moving back and forth between these songs for the album that were so personal on the one hand, and then on the other, working in a very collaborative atmosphere on something structured and theatrical. It was a great contrast that I think allowed me to explore more of the potential of who I am.”
The Crossing is in many ways the culmination of Sophie B. Hawkins’ life-long apprenticeship in
creative transcendence. Hawkins grew up in a colorful but troubled New York family and found an outlet for her yearning and imagination in music at 14 years old, Drawn to the intensity and spell of rhythm, she left home then and moved in with her African Drum teacher Godson, and African master drummer Babutune Olatunji, to learn, eat and breathe music. She entered the rarified realm of female percussionists, playing with a number of artists including Bryan Ferry, until she literally found the strength of her own voice. In 1992, she cut her first demo as a singer, and it would go on to become the international hit single, “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover,” showcasing the tough-yet-tender, movingly transparent vocals that would become her trademark.
Her first album, Tongues and Tails, full of primal, fiery pop, was an immediate success, earning her a
Grammy nomination for “Best New Artist.” Hawkins followed that with Whaler, which featured the smash ballad, “As I Lay Me Down,” which remains the longest-running hit single in the Billboard charts in American history. The album, as equally gutsy as her first yet an atmospheric departure sealed her rising reputation for musical breadth and lyrical depth.
Hawkins’ third album, Timbre, in which she broke out into a more earthy, stripped-back sound that
aimed at the core of her personal expression, was released in 1999. In a move toward artistic independence, Hawkins worked out an arrangement that would allow her to leave her label while retaining the masters to Timbre. She re-released the album on her newly born label Trumpet Swan Productions – then hit the road, on her own this time, just Sophie and her band touring the country in a station wagon.
2004’s Wilderness saw Hawkins diving into a jazzier style for what would become her most musically
layered and emotionally complex album yet, and the first recorded entirely in her Los Angeles home studio. Playfully exploring a collage of musical influences and her own multi-instrumental talents, Hawkins played guitar, cello, keyboard, drums and a variety of exotic percussion on a recording Rolling Stone singled out for its “dreamy charm.”
The roiling energy and close intimacy of Hawkins’ live shows was captured in 2006’s Bad Kitty Board
Mix, a two-disc set recorded in Seattle. Spotlighting her improvisational instincts, Hawkins says she wanted this live album to be something different, “not just the songs you already know, but what they become in front of you, totally raw, exposed and new every night.”
In 2008, Hawkins’ life took one of its most dramatic and enlarging turns yet, as she became the proud
mother of a son, Dashiell, now only 14 months old. “Becoming a mother gave me an amazing new perspective on being an artist,” she muses. “There’s an immense amount of truth and honesty and presence that comes out in our relationship. It’s a constant reminder that the most beautiful thing you can ever do for another person is to fully, passionately and fearlessly express yourself and what you believe in.”
I Want You
Sophie B. Hawkins Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
The lonely organ grinder cries,
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you.
The cracked bells and washed-out horns
Blow into my face with scorn,
But it's not that way,
I wasn't born to lose you.
I want you, I want you,
Honey, I want you.
The drunken politician leaps
Upon the street where mothers weep
And the saviors who are fast asleep,
They wait for you.
And I wait for them to interrupt
Me drinkin' from my broken cup
And ask me to
Open up the gate for you.
I want you, I want you,
I want you so bad,
Honey, I want you.
Now all my fathers, they've gone down,
True love they've been without it.
But all their daughters put me down
'Cause I don't think about it.
Well, I return to the Queen of Spades
And talk with my chambermaid.
She knows that I'm not afraid
To look at her.
She is good to me
And there's nothing she doesn't see.
She knows where I'd like to be
But it doesn't matter.
I want you, I want you,
I want you so bad,
Honey, I want you.
Now your dancing child with his Chinese suit,
He spoke to me, I took his flute.
No, I wasn't very cute to him,
Was I?
But I did it, though, because he lied
Because he took you for a ride
And because time was on his side
And because I
I want you, I want you,
I want you so bad,
Honey, I want you.
The lyrics of Sophie B. Hawkins's song 'I Want You' contain a sense of longing and desperation for the person she wants. The singer refers to various people and objects throughout the lyrics, such as 'the guilty undertaker,' 'the lonely organ grinder,' and 'the drunken politician' to symbolize society's rejection and disapproval of her desire for this person. The cracked bells and washed-out horns that blow into her face with scorn represent the obstacles and critics in her way, trying to convince her to give up on this pursuit.
However, she adamantly refuses to listen to them and acknowledges that she was not born to lose this person. She describes feeling as though they are the missing piece in her life, and her desire for them is so intense that she repeats 'I want you' multiple times throughout the song, emphasizing her desperation.
In the last verse, the singer mentions returning to the Queen of Spades, a reference to a Russian card game, to speak with her chambermaid. The chambermaid sees everything, and the singer is not afraid of her because she knows where she wants to be, and nothing else matters. This verse alludes to the idea that the singer is willing to take risks to get what she wants and is unapologetic about her desire.
Overall, the song uses various symbols and references to represent the societal and personal obstacles that come with pursuing a forbidden love. The singer's intense passion and desire for this person hold the song together, and the repetition of 'I want you' makes the song's message even more powerful.
Line by Line Meaning
The guilty undertaker sighs,
The person responsible for putting someone to rest with full honor sighs regretfully for not having known the person who passed well enough.
The lonely organ grinder cries,
The street performer plays on his instrument, feeling the weight of sad memories.
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you.
The sound of the saxophones suggests that giving in to temptation could lead to unfavorable circumstances; a cautionary melody.
The cracked bells and washed-out horns
Blow into my face with scorn,
Damaged bells and horns play off-key and express disapproval towards the person despite their attraction to them.
But it's not that way,
I wasn't born to lose you.
Despite the discordant sounds and people warning them of the consequences, the artist believes that they were destined to be with this person and will do what it takes to make it work.
I want you, I want you,
I want you so bad,
Honey, I want you.
The singer emphasizes their attraction and longing for the person, unconditionally and without reservation, acknowledging their desire for them.
The drunken politician leaps
Upon the street where mothers weep
And the saviors who are fast asleep,
They wait for you.
The intoxicated statesman stumbles onto the street where grieving mothers mourn, and the passively protective people await the arrival of the person the singer desires.
And I wait for them to interrupt
Me drinkin' from my broken cup
And ask me to
Open up the gate for you.
The artist waits for the moment when others will come and ask for assistance, therefore opening the door to their significant other's arrival, in a broken state, but still hopeful.
Now all my fathers, they've gone down,
True love they've been without it.
But all their daughters put me down
'Cause I don't think about it.
The artist has noticed the lack of genuine love in previous generations and how their standards of love do not meet previous generations, causing the next generation to look down on them.
Well, I return to the Queen of Spades
And talk with my chambermaid.
She knows that I'm not afraid
To look at her.
She is good to me
And there's nothing she doesn't see.
She knows where I'd like to be
But it doesn't matter.
When feeling lost or confused, the artist turns to someone they consider trustworthy, the Queen of Spades, and can confide in them completely. The chambermaid recognizes the artist's desires, but the outcome does not matter, as they long for someone else.
Now your dancing child with his Chinese suit,
He spoke to me, I took his flute.
No, I wasn't very cute to him,
Was I?
But I did it, though, because he lied
Because he took you for a ride
And because time was on his side
And because I
The singer converses with the individual wearing a Chinese suit, who lies to the person they want to be with to be with someone else. The singer takes the Chinese child's flute as a result of the negativity surrounding the situation, regardless of the fact that their actions were unkind.
I want you, I want you,
I want you so bad,
Honey, I want you.
The artist repeats their want and need for the person, highlighting how they long for them, regardless of the challenging circumstances.
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: Bob Dylan
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@odinofold4982
She took my breath away when I watched the show, and she still does. Can you imagine someone saying "i want you" with that much passion to you?
@jaygreen1414
Yes you said it
@maxmooney628
One of the most underappreciated vocalists of all time
@tinagiampapa1882
Her and Darryl Hall also
@4711StGermain
from 3:30 on -in 40 years as a Dylan fan I have NEVER heard a better delivery of Dylan's beautifully tangled lyrics. This must have made the hair on Dylan's neck stand on end. Superb performance, young lady! Superb performance
@cevinwillson9113
Actually Dylan hated it said it was to sexy and had it removed from the CD
@gaudphree841
@Cevin Willson Which is funny because he played a similar arrangement only two or three years later.
https://youtu.be/EcAYQ5hdrQ0
@lindsayevans5297
Cevin, just curious, where did you hear/read about Dylan hating the song and having it removed from the concert album?
@danielesian6575
youtube, please don't let this video be removed! This is just such a magnificent
combination of talents coming together for a moment in time! Let's push for a
contribution by anyone wanting it possible for this recording to be on one of those
gold records included on the next Voyager type spacecraft. Imagine this rendition
moving through the universe. Wouldn't this be, what others out there, hearing
music for the first time, something we can share?
@Diletant80
This song is expressing what I feel. My lovely girl died 12.05.97 in an accident-fire.In this song she came back and I am grateful because of the kiss got from a soul :) God bless you all. :)