The meaning of the song is relatively straightforward. The love of his life has left him and he remains miserable hoping that she will return some day. The melody of this song is beautiful and resonates a style that is distinctively ELO. Even if you heard another band play it you would recognize it as an ELO song. The brilliance of the song is not in its simplistic meaning, it is found in the poetry of the lyrics, and the craft in which this melancholy feeling is conveyed to the listener.
He begins by explaining his emptiness and how his world has gone dim. He uses the imagery of the city streets being empty and the lights not shining any more. The sadness and lost of zest for life are, "the songs that are way down low". These thoughts keep turning and turning around in his head.
He contrasts these sad thoughts with faint memories of the good times he had with her in the past. The memories of the past, of "everything that is alive", are the "sounds that flow into his mind". These memories are faint, occurring within the background of the more intense sadness, which is why they are only "echos of the daylight". This is his current condition, the condition of being in his "blue world".
His love for her still burns like a fire, but the torment he goes through each day is worst at night and begins to fade by dawn. This subtle insight will ring true for anyone who has experience love loss. He uses this romantic phrase "the dying embers of the night" to capture this meaning.
The next line, "still glows upon the wall so bright, burning, burning". Perhaps some time has passed and yet his passion for her still glows bright. I like the usage of the word burning here. In the previous verses he used turning, turning to mean the thoughts of sadness in his mind. Here he uses burning, burping to mean the torment of the heart. So this affair affects both heart and mind and it is all consuming.
"The tired street hat hide away, from here to everywhere they go. Roll past my door into the day". In the night he goes searching for her. At every turn and corner he does not find her so the streets look the same or tired. The search is endless but finally at daybreak the search leads him back home. This may not literally be a search on the physical streets, but more likely he is constantly imagining and scheming a way to get her back.
Turn to Stone, the title and theme of the song, indicates a stone, an inanimate object, not alive. The will to live has left him and like a tone he's paralyzed to participate in living his life. On a different aspect, like a stone, he can make his heart hard, so that it is protected from being broken. His only salvation is that she returns. In a last ditch effort he doesn't give up hope and resolves that she "will return again some day." Meanwhile, he's still turning to stone.
The meaning of the song is relatively straightforward. The love of his life has left him and he remains miserable hoping that she will return some day. The melody of this song is beautiful and resonates a style that is distinctively ELO. Even if you heard another band play it you would recognize it as an ELO song. The brilliance of the song is not in its simplistic meaning, it is found in the poetry of the lyrics, and the craft in which this melancholy feeling is conveyed to the listener.
He begins by explaining his emptiness and how his world has gone dim. He uses the imagery of the city streets being empty and the lights not shining any more. The sadness and lost of zest for life are, "the songs that are way down low". These thoughts keep turning and turning around in his head.
He contrasts these sad thoughts with faint memories of the good times he had with her in the past. The memories of the past, of "everything that is alive", are the "sounds that flow into his mind". These memories are faint, occurring within the background of the more intense sadness, which is why they are only "echos of the daylight". This is his current condition, the condition of being in his "blue world".
His love for her still burns like a fire, but the torment he goes through each day is worst at night and begins to fade by dawn. This subtle insight will ring true for anyone who has experience love loss. He uses this romantic phrase "the dying embers of the night" to capture this meaning.
The next line, "still glows upon the wall so bright, burning, burning". Perhaps some time has passed and yet his passion for her still glows bright. I like the usage of the word burning here. In the previous verses he used turning, turning to mean the thoughts of sadness in his mind. Here he uses burning, burping to mean the torment of the heart. So this affair affects both heart and mind and it is all consuming.
"The tired street hat hide away, from here to everywhere they go. Roll past my door into the day". In the night he goes searching for her. At every turn and corner he does not find her so the streets look the same or tired. The search is endless but finally at daybreak the search leads him back home. This may not literally be a search on the physical streets, but more likely he is constantly imagining and scheming a way to get her back.
Turn to Stone, the title and theme of the song, indicates a stone, an inanimate object, not alive. The will to live has left him and like a tone he's paralyzed to participate in living his life. On a different aspect, like a stone, he can make his heart hard, so that it is protected from being broken. His only salvation is that she returns. In a last ditch effort he doesn't give up hope and resolves that she "will return again some day." Meanwhile, he's still turning to stone.
…so many poetic ways to convey a single feeling.