James Talley: "When I Need Some Love"

Being in love means you have an interior place to go to that makes sense despite how screwed up anything in your life or in the world might be. It's a baseline, a through line. It's always there, saying, there is a place that is beautiful and good and real and greater than the daily depredations that abound. Cole Porter knew it when he wrote "I Concentrate on You" in 1940.

Whenever skies look gray to me
And trouble begins to brew,
Whenever the Winter winds become too strong,
I concentrate on you.

James Talley knew it too, when he wrote "When I Need Some Love" in 1998. The songs depict the same reality, but Talley's doesn't seem derivative. It just seems true.

When I get the blues, I think of you
When my problems are many and my answers few
When my spirit's down and it seems no use
When I need some love, I think of you