The Pax Plena song of the comes to you, admittedly, a bit late. I blame it on the irregularity of selecting songs from my iTunes library. While the process yields variety, it takes a while before one song strikes me with an unexpected trip down memory lane. Only those eliciting such reactions make the cut.
Nevertheless, a few weeks ago we featured Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning and billed it as a gospel hymn to romance. If Sinatra is the gold standard of his milieu, then Brad Paisley’s I Wish You’d Stay is its country equivalent.
Released in 2001 on Paisley’s second country album, I Wish You’d Stay tells the story of romance gone wrong. It speaks artfully to the complex emotions that seem to go hand in hand with unrequited love.
What makes it a powerful piece despite its traditional country pastiche is the universality of emotion conveyed in the lyrics. Simply put, we’ve all been there before. Love slips away. Nights grow cold. We want a mulligan. But it is not to be. The vividness of feeling is captured by Paisley’s singing style and aptly demonstrates this complexity through verse. And in so doing, Paisley creates a song that all but says what we would like to say, if only we could find the strength.
Naturally, the song has some special meaning to yours truly. Specific references are made to Sallisaw, Oklahoma for the faithful reading back home. References also abound to Tennessee- a state not without some faint impression in my lost annals of mind. But the application could well be made by anyone who has ever loved and lost.
So, to those burning the midnight oils, traveling the information superhighway, and to those lost in wistful memories of what might have been, please enjoy the Pax Plena song of the week, I Wish You’d Stay.
The song appears below courtesy of Songza.com for your immediate listening gratification. For those interested, the video lacked an embedding function (blast you BMG Records), but it can be seen here.
I Wish You’d Stay
I talked to my sister in Memphis
And I told her you were movin’ to town
Here’s her number
She said she’d be glad to show you around
I left a map on your front seat
Just in case you lose your way
But don’t worry, once you reach Sallisaw
It’s all interstate
I know you need to go
But before you do I want you to know, that I
Wish you the best
And I wish you nothing less
Than every thing you’ve ever dreamed of
And I hope that you find love along the way
But most of all
I wish you’d stay
I figure right about sundown
You’ll be in West Tennessee
And by then
Maybe I’ll understand why you had to leave
I know that you’ve done some changin’
And I know there’s no changin’ your mind
And yes I know
We’ve been through this a thousand times
I’m sorry for still holdin’ on
I’ll try to let go and I’ll try to be strong, and I’ll
Wish you the best
And I wish you nothing less
Than every thing you’ve ever dreamed of
And I hope that you find love along the way
But most of all
I wish you’d stay
Yeah, everything you’ve ever dreamed of
And I hope that you’ll find love along the way
But most of all
I wish you’d stay
I wish you’d stay
Pax Plena 