#to the mutual whos playlist this is who will remain nameless for now: i love you mwah

[bryng]

oh okay. thanks

[therecordconnection]

Ranting and Raving: “These Dreams” by Heart

This was the song that was playing when I realized I was with the first person I had ever truly fallen in love with.

I met them in August of 2014 during orientation weekend when I was starting college. We clicked immediately through a similar sense of humor and a shared love of classic rock and music history. One of the first things I learned was that one of their favorite bands was Heart. I’ve never forgotten that. 

She (who will remain nameless out of respect, if you don’t mind) and I quickly became close friends for our entire freshman year. We were inseparable. So much so that quite a number of our mutual friends at the time had wondered if we were dating. We weren’t then, but during the first night of winter break our sophomore year, we entered the campus commons lounge area of our school as friends, left as a couple. It didn’t last long.

We were both young (just entered our twenties) and foolish. Neither of us had been in a romantic relationship with anyone before, so we had no idea what to do or, for that matter, what we truly wanted. Nobody really does when they’re that age. Our relationship would last a little over two  months, about the length of our school’s winter break. It started in December 2015. We were done by February 2016.

She was the one that wanted things between us to end because she had feelings for me, but they weren’t as strong as mine. So naturally, I wanted to keep fighting for it. I kept fighting and trying in vain to save a relationship that was, in hindsight, doomed from the start because I was fighting for someone who just didn’t feel the same way. It wasn’t her fault. In the end, all of my attempts to try and convince her to stay only drove her further away. Funny enough, it was my final attempt to save our wilted romance was the night I truly realized I had truly fallen in love with my partner. 

Our college was holding a winter formal dance at the start of the spring semester. We had been having our problems and trying to fix them. I had the thought that maybe if we went to a nice formal event, that initial spark would come back and things would start to look a little brighter. 

We never made it to the dance… because a snowstorm prevented us from going.

I still had the idea that a formal dance could bring us closer together, so I recreated a school dance in my basement. We got dressed up in what we would’ve worn to the actual dance. I got a little table with a punch bowl and some snacks set up as well as a playlist of songs we could dance to, songs that I knew we would both like. “These Dreams” by Heart was included because I just knew I had to include a song from them. At the time I only picked it because I thought it made for a nice song to slow dance to.

It’s now my favorite Heart song. It always will be.

My partner loved its inclusion. We ended up slow dancing to it and while I always found my partner beautiful, in that moment I saw a different kind of beauty that she hadn’t shown me before. She didn’t wear a dress, but I remember her outfit vividly: light green dress shirt, black dress pants, closed black shoes that click-clacked on the hardwood floor. She looked like magic itself.

During the song, she sang along to every word and acted out all the lyrics while holding me (the way she sang “Is it cloak or dagger / Could it be spring or fall” still sticks with me). Her long brown hair whipped back and forth during the chorus. Her big beautiful bug eyes had a certain glow and sparkle to them. For a brief moment, the question, “Is she really happy with me?” didn’t plague my mind. I could tell she was having a good time. When the song was playing I thought she was the most beautiful person in the entire world. The only person that mattered. It was right then and there I knew she was the person I was fully enamored with. I don’t even care that things didn’t end up working out because I can look back on that time almost eight years later and smile. I can look at how lucky I am to be able to say that I felt and experienced a wonderful moment that can really only happen once in a lifetime. People fall in and out of love all the time, but there’s a beauty in being able to say “I remember the exact moment I knew I had truly fallen in love with another person.” Everybody has a song that makes them think of their first partner. “These Dreams” is mine.

I’ll say that “These Dreams” isn’t the best Heart song, but it’s arguably the best thing to come out of their mid-80s period and generally the song from that era that’s defended and loved more than any other. It’s the rare Heart song that features guitarist Nancy Wilson on lead vocals as opposed to her raven-haired siren sister Ann. It’s also a rare instance where I think Nancy was the better choice of singer. Ann certainly has the ability to sing this well, but there’s something about Nancy’s vocals that offers a gentleness and a vulnerability that I don’t think Ann could’ve pulled off in the right way. Hers is a voice more suited for folkier Heart songs like “Dreamboat Annie” or “Dog & Butterfly”. Strangely enough, before Nancy Wilson got her moment in the limelight with this song, Stevie Nicks and Kim Carnes both turned the song down. As good as those two ladies are, they were right to turn it down. I can’t imagine anybody other than Nancy singing this.

I think the main reason it remains beloved compared to other 80s Heart hits like “Alone” or “What About Love?” is that it practices a level of restraint mid-80s Heart weren’t allowed to practice. Their self-titled album from 1985, which “These Dreams” comes from, was the first time the sisters relied on outside songwriters to help give their career a second wind. It worked, though the sisters today will regretfully tell you that they had to sell their souls in order to do it. “These Dreams” remains the best song that outside help gave them. It’s a mid-80s love ballad to the core and while it’s a little cheesy (to the point where the first time I ever heard the song was when it was featured in an old Time Life TV ad for the Ultimate Love Songs Collection that I had to see a bazillion times at night growing up) it never stops being just a damn good song. That level of restraint I mentioned earlier is a key part. Nancy’s voice doesn’t have the power that her sister’s has, so the song has to compliment that limitation by having the synths take a backseat and have a more atmospheric role rather than being blaring and in your face like in “What About Love?” or “Never”. The synths in the song make the song feel floaty, like you’ve been whisked away into a dream. That one synth that’s used during the chorus, which I can only describe as “the one that sounds like the opening to the Reading Rainbow theme”, is just heavenly. The whole production is smart to keep Nancy front and center as the star of the song. Everything done musically compliments the voice singing the song, because in this case the singer is the selling point. There’s the novelty that this is a Heart song where the other sister is singing lead for once. Also, my god that chorus is great. Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics for this song and he really captures something beautiful here. The verses focus more on poetic imagery and walking around a fantasy world than it does a standard love ballad and it’s better for it. “Every second of the night I live another life” is the best description for the beauty and wonder of dreams that I’ve ever heard. Another standout line for me is “Funny how your feet / In dreams never touch the Earth.” When Taupin was really on, he was one of the best to ever do it.

If I had to guess another reason for why this song remains more beloved than other 80s Heart, I would say that it’s because it has a great story behind it. 

In the liner notes for the album, “These Dreams” is dedicated to a woman named Sharon Hess, a friend of Nancy Wilson’s and someone who suffered with (and later died) of leukemia. They had gotten to meet and became close during the making of Heart’s self-titled. Sharon Hess’ sister Shannon shared her story to Songfacts:

“Sharon was a fan who had a custom, handmade blue acoustic guitar made for Nancy. It was her dying wish to meet Nancy and give it to her. She did get her wish, and was able to spend several days in the recording studio with the band while they were working on this album. She died four weeks later, on Nancy's birthday. The reason for choosing that particular song for the dedication was simply because it was the only song on the album where Nancy sang lead vocals.”

(Nancy Wilson and Sharon Hess, ca. 1985. Image source: Shannon Hess-Terlop)

It’s a really sweet little story and it’s nice that Nancy dedicated her big moment at the microphone to a special friend. It’s also one hell of a song to have dedicated to you. The dedication makes sense beyond the simple reasoning of “because Nancy sings the song.” Lyrically, the song is about a woman entering a dream world and finding escape there. Dreams are the only place to “hide away from the pain.” One could interpret the song as someone finding respite from a horrible disease by managing to fall asleep and dream. “These dreams go on when I close my eyes.” One can only hope that the dreams go on even when you close your eyes for the final time. I like to think they do.

The most beautiful thing about music, I think, is its uncanny ability to bring you back to a specific moment in time. Time travel isn’t possible, but whenever I hear songs that mean a lot to me, like “These Dreams”, it becomes possible for a few moments. I listen to “These Dreams” and I’m a twenty year old in the basement of his parents’ house trying to be romantic and save something that was never going to be saved. I’ve had two dreams about my ex in the past eight years. Not of “the one that got away” variety but the “a glimpse of a road not taken” kind.

In case you’re wondering, yes, I’m still in contact with that ex. We send each other memes about music and talk about music periodically. I know whenever Mic the Snare uploads a really good video because she will send it to me every time. We find a way to get together every few months and catch up and it’s always a nice time. The nature of our relationship has changed in the years we’ve known each other. I know that I don’t love her the same way now that I did when I was twenty and I’ve never bothered to ask how or even if she looks back on our time together at all. Part of me thinks I’m better off never knowing. We never talk about it, it remains in the mist.

Last little story before I go. I took her to see Heart in Camden, NJ in 2019. They opened with her favorite song (“Rockin’ Heaven Down” from Bebe Le Strange. I’ve never seen her eyes get wider nor a scream louder than when that song started.) “These Dreams” was performed midway through the show and all I could do was smile and be entranced. Nancy sang it just as well as she did on record in 1985 and the arrangement was gorgeous. We were also lucky enough to be blessed with a performance of “Stairway to Heaven”. Ann Wilson knocked it out of the park as she always does. We had a good time and we were both as happy there as we were when we danced with each other back in the winter of 2016.

The ex I’ve written about here does in fact read my stuff sometimes. She read this and approved of this being out there online. So I’ll leave with this: [Redacted], thank you for always saving a little light for me, even during the times I didn’t deserve it.

I love you. A part of me always will.