Dolby promoted himself as a kind of mad scientist, an egghead that had successfully harnessed the power of synthesizers and samplers, using them to make catchy pop and electro-funk. Before he launched his solo career, Dolby had already worked as a studio musician, technician, and songwriter. After starting out as a teenaged live sound man, mixing The Fall, The Members and others using a PA he built himself, he formed the arty post-punk band Camera Club (also known as Bruce Woolley & the Camera Club) with Bruce Woolley, Geoff Downes, Trevor Horn and Matthew Seligman. Within a year, he had left the group and joined Lene Lovich’s backing band and gave her his song "New Toy", which became a British hit in 1981. That same year, he released his first solo single, "Urges", on the English independent label Armageddon. By the autumn, he had signed with Parlophone and released "Europa and the Pirate Twins", which nearly cracked the UK Top 40.
Dolby started playing synthesizer on sessions for other artists in 1982. That year, he played keyboards on Def Leppard’s Pyromania and Joan Armatrading’s Walk Under Ladders. His most distinctive session credit is that keyboard line after the chorus on Foreigner’s "Waiting for a Girl Like You". In that eventful summer, Dolby also collaborating with New York rappers Whodini to create "Magic’s Wand" – a pivotal early hip hop track (the first rap single to shift 1 million copies), and it also single-handedly started the new jack swing movement.
Even with all of these achievements, 1982 was most noteworthy for the release of Dolby’s first solo album, The Golden Age of Wireless, in the summer of 1982, the landmark album reaching number 13. "Windpower", the first single from the record, became his first Top 40 UK hit in the late summer. Other cuts from the album include "The Airwaves", and "One of Our Submarines", a meditation on the futility of empire.
In January of 1983, Dolby released an EP, Blinded by Science, which includes what would become his most well-known track, "She Blinded Me with Science" featuring a cameo vocal appearance by the notorious British eccentric Magnus Pike, who also appeared in the song’s video. "She Blinded Me with Science" was a minor hit in England, but the EP and the single became a major American hit in 1983, thanks to MTV’s heavy airplay of the video. Eventually, the song reached number five on the US charts and it was included on a resequenced and reissued version of The Golden Age of Wireless, which peaked at number 13 in America.
The Flat Earth, Dolby's second album, appeared in early 1984, and harkens back to a time when songs mattered more than the video, even as MTV was discovering its strength. Opening with "Dissidents", conjuring up images of blacklisted authors and ugly snow, gray from oppression, with Matthew Seligman’s bass at the fore, lavish, growling, popping through octaves, funk-a-fied and twinkling with harmonics throughout the album. The title track is an R&B daydream of piano and Motown stabs of rhythm guitar. "Screen Kiss" has a similarly ethereal quality, and the lyrics are lush with imagery. The cover of Dan Hicks’ 1967 "I Scare Myself" is a balmy jazz club cocktail – faithfully nostalgic, right down to a bittersweet trombone solo from Peter Thomas. "Hyperactive" is one part bizarre to two parts infectious; guest vocalist Adele Bertei fuels the fire to what was already destined to be a memorable diversion beyond the reach of Top 40. The single became Thomas’ biggest UK hit, peaking at number 17.
During 1985, Dolby collaborated with artists including Stevie Wonder, Dusty Springfield and Herbie Hancock; and notched up some more high-concept production credits. George Clinton's Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends, Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen, and Joni Mitchell’s Dog Eat Dog were all midwifed by Dolby, who also was musical director for David Bowie at Live Aid. Also in 1985, he began composing film scores, starting with Fever Pitch. In 1986, he composed the scores for Gothic and Howard the Duck, for which he credited himself as Dolby's Cube. (That credit led to a lawsuit from the Dolby Labs, who eventually prohibited the musician from using the name "Dolby" in conjunction with any other name than "Thomas.")
Aliens Ate My Buick, Dolby's long-delayed third album, appeared in 1988 to a mixed reaction, although "Airhead" became a minor British hit. That same year, Dolby married actress Kathleen Beller. For the rest of the late 80s and early 90s, Dolby continued to score films, producing and building his own computer equipment.
1992’s Astronauts and Heretics, features guest stars such as Eddie Van Halen, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Ofra Haza. The album opens with "I Love You Goodbye", one of Thomas’ most evocative songs, and ends with "Beauty of a Dream" which is also a contender for that honour. Highlights found inbetween include "Cruel" (a duet with Fairground Attraction’s Eddie Reader), "I Live in a Suitcase" and "Close But No Cigar".
The following year, Dolby founded the computer software company Headspace in Silicon Valley, releasing The Virtual String Quartet as its first program, and also pioneered technology for music on mobile phones. For the rest of the 90s, Headspace occupied most of Dolby's time and energy. In 1994, he released The Gate to the Mind’s Eye, a soundtrack to the animated short film Mind’s Eye. Also that year, Capitol released the greatest-hits collection, Retrospectacle.
Thirteen years after Astronauts and Heretics, Dolby returned to live performance in 2006 with his solo Sole Inhabitant tour, which covered North America and the UK, with Thomas recreating the highlights of his earlier work from scratch, with a camera mounted like a miner’s lamp on his head, and a big screen showing the view from the artist, turning what would be a fairly dull one-man-and-a-rack-of-synths into a fascinating audio visual experience and an unintended masterclass for music technology students.
UK indie label Invisible Hands Music released a CD and DVD box set recorded on the Sole Inhabitant tour. These fresh and modern reinterpretations of Thomas’ work to date precedes a new studio album due in 2008, which is as-yet untitled, but does include a song about Britney’s ex Kevin Federline (“K-Fed”) who used an uncleared sample from "She Blinded Me with Science" and did not respond to legal approaches until a ‘cease-and-desist’ was posted in the comments field of his MySpace page. That song is called "My Karma Hit Your Dogma", and bodes well for a mighty return to form, combining Thomas’ humour and intelligence with a unique musical vision.
2011 saw Dolby get busy by returning with a new studio album A Map of the Floating City on 29 October. The album is broken down into three genres of Urbanoia's tales of city experiences; Amerikana as Dolby's take on his years living in America and it's roots music; and Oceanea: songs of life by the sea in his home country of England. The music was debuted first as download EPs to Dolby's online community and then previewed by a transmedia interactive game also called the FloatingCity.com.
Thomas Dolby is taking the music back on tour as a solo artist and with varying line-ups of bands, doing two tours of the UK in 2011, and has his first trip to Australia in February 2012 followed by dates in Japan. In March Dolby kicks off the Time-Capsule.tv tour at the SxSW Festival in Austin playing dates in USA and Canada through April. He will have a trailer parked at venues on his tour where you can produce a 30 second video offering words of wisdom to whoever will be walking the earth in the future. Dolby wants to give people a chance to “explain to an alien visitor what went wrong with our civilization. Our species may not be around on this planet much longer, so you might as well leave a welcome message for the next guys.”
Close But No Cigar
Thomas Dolby Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Close but no cigar
You didn't miss by far
You know you came this close
Close but no cigar
Some people sing love songs
Everybody's got one
It's more like my love gone wrong song
She came to breakfast
And stayed a week
But the lie detectors
Broke down each time she tried to speak
Broke down when she said
"You came close
Close but no cigar
You didn't miss by far
You know you came this close
Close but no cigar
No matter where you are
You know you came this close
Close but no cigar"
I remember, I remember, I remember
The promise in your eyes
As black as the night I drove you to the airport
And I remember, I remember, I remember
The wide Brazilian sky that swallowed you
Then I hit thirty
Guess I can't complain
But I must have been lonely
The night I bumped into Lorraine
She came for coffee
And stayed all night
But the lie detectors
Broke down every time I tried to smile
Broke down like the store of my life
And each dream I missed by half a mile
Broke down when I told her:
"You came close
close but no cigar
You didn't miss by far
You know you came this close
close but no cigar
No matter where you are
You know you came so close
Close but no cigar
You didn't miss by far
You know you came this close
Close but no cigar
We're better off by far
But you know we came this close
Close but no cigar
The lyrics of Thomas Dolby's song "Close But No Cigar" tell the story of two failed relationships. The first verse talks about someone who nearly achieved something, but fell just short of it. It's not clear what this achievement is, but it's implied that it's something important. The chorus repeats the phrase "close but no cigar," a common phrase that means someone came close to success but ultimately failed. The second verse tells the story of a failed romance that the singer had with a woman who came to stay at his house for a week. She tried to deceive him, but the lie detector test proved her insincerity. The final verse tells the story of the singer's own failed romance. He bumped into a woman named Lorraine and spent the night with her, but couldn't bring himself to be genuine with her either.
Line by Line Meaning
You came close
You almost succeeded at what you aimed for
Close but no cigar
An idiom which means that someone almost succeeds at something but ultimately fails
You didn't miss by far
The attempt was not far from succeeding
You know you came this close
The result was very near from being achieved
Some people sing love songs
People express their love in different ways
Everybody's got one
Everyone has a love story to tell
This isn't my love song
This song is not about successful love
It's more like my love gone wrong song
It's a song about the failures of love
She came to breakfast
The woman came for breakfast
And stayed a week
She stayed much longer than planned
But the lie detectors
A machine used to detect lies
Broke down each time she tried to speak
The machine didn't work when the woman tried to explain something
Broke down when she said
The machine stopped detecting lies when the woman said something
"You came close
A repetition of the chorus
No matter where you are
Whether it was a long time ago or recently
I remember
The singer reminiscences about the past
The promise in your eyes
The singer remembers a promise that was made
As black as the night I drove you to the airport
The singer remembers when he took the person to the airport
The wide Brazilian sky that swallowed you
The person disappeared into the sky on the day they left
Then I hit thirty
The person has turned 30 years old
Guess I can't complain
The singer feels like they should be content with their life
But I must have been lonely
The singer thinks that they were lonely
The night I bumped into Lorraine
The night the singer met someone named Lorraine
She came for coffee
Lorraine came over for coffee
And stayed all night
The singer and Lorraine stayed up talking and didn't go to bed
Broke down every time I tried to smile
The singer was upset but didn't want to show it to Lorraine
Broke down like the store of my life
The singer's life is falling apart
And each dream I missed by half a mile
The singer's dreams have been failing
Broke down when I told her:
The singer opened up to Lorraine about his struggles
"We're better off by far
The chorus repeats with a new line added
But you know we came this close
Despite the difficulties, they almost made it work
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Written by: MORGAN, THOMAS DOLBY, THOMAS ROBERTSON
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind