Song Lyric Sunday: Every Little Kiss

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Today Jim has invited us to play a song which contains the words ’embrace, hug, kiss.’ You can see what he says in his post Kiss My Grits. I’m looking forward to his post for today to find out what that means! I hadn’t really given this much thought until a few days ago, but if you have seen my latest post, Tuesday Tunes 127, you’ll see that I have rather talked myself into this one. In that piece I played the title track of the album on which this song features, and said that it was a closely run thing for me to choose between that and another song on the album. This one:

And as this is for SLS – Song Lyric Sunday – it wouldn’t be right not to include them, would it:

Way out here, working on the docks
Everyone sees the long day through
Now what would I do without the nights and the phone
And the chance just to talk to you
Oh, what would I do now
Hey, just to talk to you, a thousand miles away, hey hey
What I wouldn’t give for only one night
A little relief in sight
Someday when times weren’t so tight
When the day goes down on water town
When the sun sinks low all around
That’s when I know I, I need you now
Yes you’re what I miss, every little kiss
Every little one, every little one

Everybody here’s a number, not a name
But I guess it’s alright with me
As I stood alone, after a long day
In the absence of company
Oh, I let my mind wander
A thousand miles away hey hey

What I wouldn’t give for only one night
A little relief in sight
Someday when times weren’t so tight
When the day goes down on water town
When the sun sinks low all around
That’s when I know I, I need you now
Yes you’re what I miss, every little kiss
Every little one, every little one

What I wouldn’t give for only one night
A little relief in sight
Someday when times weren’t so tight
When the day goes down on water town
When the sun sinks low all around
That’s when I know I, I need you now
Yes you’re what I miss, every little kiss
Every little one, every little one

Every little one, every little one...

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Bruce Hornsby

Every Little Kiss lyrics © Zappo Music

This song was first released in May 1986 as the debut single by Bruce Hornsby and the Range, and it peaked at #72 in the US chart. After the success of the album – The Way It Is – it was re-released as a single in June 1987, and got to #14 second time round. In the meantime, the album had reached #3 in the US and #16 in the UK, and the title track had been a #1 single in the US, Canada, and the Netherlands, and had got to #15 in the UK.

In case you were wondering, the intro to this song features an extended quotation from the opening of Movement III, The Alcotts, from Charles Ives’s Piano Sonata No. 2. So now you know – I didn’t, I had to look that up! Why am I playing it today? I have always loved this song and the album – both are fantastic, in my view, and I still enjoy playing them now. They take me back to the days when my first daughter had just been born – in March 1986 – and in order not to disturb her fragile sleeping patterns we had decided not to use our stereo too much. I had the job each evening of washing all of the baby kit (bottles etc) and putting it into the steriliser ready to make the next day’s feeds. This wasn’t the most interesting of tasks, and I was really grateful for the invention of the Walkman, which allowed me some musical accompaniment while I was doing it. This album got played a lot back then, and hearing it always takes me back to those times: tiring but happy, as any new parent can probably tell you.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this song as much as I do. If so, do come back on Tuesday for this week’s specially themed set of Tuesday Tunes, and join me again next Sunday for SLS – I have an absolute beauty lined up for it! See you again soon 😊🎶

34 thoughts on “Song Lyric Sunday: Every Little Kiss”

  1. Pingback: October | Take It Easy

    • Likewise. It’s a great song, and the album is fantastic. He had huge success over there at that time, less so here but still some respectable chart placings. For many years an instrumental part of The Way It Is was used as background music on some of our sports programmes so I heard it a lot!

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  7. Wonderful song choice! I haven’t heard this song in a long time! Thanks!
    LOL about the Walkman. 🙂
    You had a daughter in March? Mine was born March 27th, though not the same year! I was a tad younger in 1986. 🙂

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    • Thank you, I’m glad you liked it. The Walkman was the height of cool back in those days! But it was a real boon for me in listening to music with a baby who woke if you breathed near her!

      Yes, March 16th. It was a memorable year: the World Cup was played in Mexico that year, which meant that games were often broadcast into the night on our time. I watched a lot of them with a baby in my arms, as somehow they soothed her. More than once my then wife came downstairs in the morning to find us both asleep on the sofa 🤣

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