Song #40: Eddie Money - "Take Me Home Tonight"

Song #40: Eddie Money - "Take Me Home Tonight" (1986)

Can't Hold Back

"I get frightened in all this darkness. I get nightmares, I hate to sleep alone."

Eddie Money's "Take Me Home Tonight" is a passionately sung ballad, smarter than the average love song and deeper than the average "I need you" tune. While the song could easily masquerade as an interchangeable hit from the eighties, the tune actually bears a more haunting sound and instrumentation than many songs of its kind, as well as featuring lyrics darker and more lonely than anything I've heard from the 1980's pop era.

Money's song is simple - he wants somebody to be with when the sun goes down, so he will be deprived of the loneliness in his life. However, consider some of its lyrics. "I get frightened in all this darkness. I get nightmares, I hate to sleep alone. I need some company, a guardian angel. To keep me warm when the cold winds blow." If we want to get really analytical about the film and its lyrics, we could almost say the man suffers from some sort of depression, to the point where sleeping alone causes him great mental strain and that the only way to remedy that is if someone he really cares about sleeps next to him. It wasn't until about my third or forth listen of the song did I realize how haunting that collection of lyrics were and how they profoundly stood out in a song that is pretty straight forward in terms of meaning and focus.

Money's trademark voice makes the song what it is. Money has just the right voice for something like this, where he can mumble and be mysterious or sing openly and warmly in the song's chorus. "Take Me Home Tonight" is a thoroughly infectious song, and while it is recognized pretty well and receives considerable airplay, I still am not sure most people look at the song through the darker lens it really deserves to be seen through.

Give "Take Me Home Tonight" a listen, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHKqA5mkT7I