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The Way It Used to Be

Writers - Tennant/Lowe/Cooper/Higgins/Coler
First released - 2009
Original album - Yes
Producer - Brian Higgins, Xenomania
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)

Neil has described the underlying premise of this song as one in which a couple, years after breaking up, meet again quite by chance. This sends the narrator into a bittersweet reminiscence of their relationship—its youthful days of romance and its gradual collapse. It turns out that, after all this time, he longs for "the way it used to be." Such a relatively elaborate backstory is hardly essential, however. It's sufficient simply to take it as a song of faded love in which Neil's narrator, who wants "more than only memories" of happiness, begs his lover to "rewind and try again."

More upbeat in style and tempo than its subject matter would suggest, the song's unusual structure doesn't even include a chorus. Rather, it steadily builds in intensity, getting ever edgier, as its narrator's recollection of the past grows more and more despondent. (In many ways, it's strongly reminiscent in theme, style, and structure of latter-day ABBA tracks like "The Winner Takes It All" and "When All Is Said and Done": upbeat music but decidedly "downer" lyrics.) Working with a Xenomania backing track, Chris wrote most of the melody on his own. But the "Don't give me all your northern pain" melody and line (and a curious line it is!—might it be alluding to ABBA?) were contributed by Xenomania's Miranda Cooper, giving that brief section a different feel from the rest of the song.

Adding to the narrator's pain is the fact that he can't point to any specific incident that may have caused or contributed to this loss of love. That might have granted him at least some small measure of comfort, at least know what went wrong. But it's the not knowing that torments him more than anything else. "I don't know why we moved away," he says. "Our promise was betrayed." Sometimes terrible things happen for no apparent reason. That doesn't diminish the terribleness of it all. On the contrary, it only makes it worse.

As the end approaches—immediately after our protagonist states, "Then and there I knew that I'd lost you"—we hear a remarkable instrumental passage. Dominated by a synth solo that's simultaneously frenzied and constrained, it reflects the narrator's mood: emotionally trapped and tormented. A highly distinctive female support vocalist (singer-songwriter Carla Marie Williams, although the Boys had originally hoped for Tina Turner) then joins Neil, casting an overwhelming mood of tension over the proceedings. Only at the very conclusion do things become more subdued again as Neil wistfully reiterates the title sentiment, only to have the song come to an unexpectedly sudden halt, as if the rug were being pulled out from under him. Only it doesn't end with the proverbial bang, but with the equally proverbial whimper: a quiet, fading chord in synth strings and a lone note on the piano.

Chris and Neil are justly proud of this track, one of the album's standouts. More than one writer has referred to it as a tour de force, and I heartily concur.

Annotations

"… lost in bed and float upstream" – An echo of a line from the 1966 Lennon-McCartney (primarily Lennon) Beatles song "I'm Only Sleeping": "Stay in bed, float upstream."
"I was there caught on Tenth Avenue / You elsewhere with Culver City blues" – Tenth Avenue in Manhattan (New York City is cited in the previous verse) is notorious for its heavy traffic. It's also known for running the economic gamut, so to speak, with some stretches impoverished while others running through some of the city's most exclusive neighborhoods. Culver City is a municipality within Greater Los Angeles and long a center of the film and television entertainment industry (though less so now than, say, fifty years ago). These lines seem to suggest that the narrator and his erstwhile lover were on opposite coasts of the United States, about as far apart geographically—and, by metaphorical extension, perhaps emotionally as well—as they could get (at least without leaving the continental United States).
"Don't give me all your northern pain" – A somewhat mystifying line, perhaps referring to the stereotypical reputation (though like many stereotypes, not without at least a grain of truth) of more northerly peoples for being more somber or melancholy in mood and outlook. One of my site visitors has suggested that, since Neil in the track-by-track audio commentary for Yes says that part of this song's storyline is set in the northern English city of Manchester (which was actually mentioned by name in an earlier version of the lyrics but subsequently excised), "northern pain" might be referring to or inspired by that specific locale. As noted above, it's even possible that this line may allude to ABBA, many of whose songs—especially during their latter years—had extremely downbeat lyrics.

Mixes/Versions

Officially released

Mixer: Jeremy Wheatley
- Album version (4:46)
- Instrumental (4:43)
  - On the special limited-edition Yes box vinyl set
Mixer: Xenomania and Pet Shop Boys
- Left of Love Dub (5:15)
  - Available on the etc. bonus disc with the limited edition of Yes
Mixer: Richard X
- Richard X Mix (8:37)

List cross-references

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