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HEALTH & MIND
When I heard it 🎧
"One day I realized lyrics were actually a love song to myself."
TONUANORICE.COM ▪️Issue 02
What we keep hearing becomes part of how we see ourselves.
Some songs arrive before I know why I need them.
I’ll hear a chorus in my mind, look up the song, and realize the words were already working on me. They were reminding me who I am, what I believe, or what I need to stop carrying.
This section is where I listen again.
Not for entertainment only, but for the message that found me.
Here's Why
What we hear enters us.
What enters us shapes us.
Sometimes a song delivers a message before we consciously understand it.
Yesterday, I heard an old favorite of mine: Midnight Train to Georgia. Over the years, I have sung this song more than a hundred times. I have felt each lyric in my soul as I lay awake late at night—kids asleep and my husband away on business—singing into the ether of my living room. I felt every word emotionally and felt the love she must have had for that man.
But yesterday, as the song played on the radio, I listened intentionally to what was actually being said. Then, to be sure...you know my routine. I pulled it up on YouTube.
And I was floored.
“Mmm-hmm, L.A. proved too much for the man...
He couldn’t make it...”
“So he’s leaving the life...
he’s come to know. He said he’s goin’ back to find what’s left of his world...”
“The world he left behind not so long ago. He said he’s leavin’ on that midnight train to Georgia, to a simpler place and time...”
Okay? Is it just me, or does this guy sound beaten down and tired? He’s in full retreat mode. As the older folks would warn about a man with no life pivot plan or vision: “Baby, he dun already been where he’s goin’.”
Well at this point I was giving the radio the complete side eye, but listened even more intently. Because I hoped there would be salvation in the next bar. But no. Glady's proclaims to the heavens -
“I'll be with him - on that midnight train to Georgia. I'd rather live in his world, than live without him - in mine.”
Wait—what?!
I believe feeling gives words power. When we sing about heartbreak, disappointment, or surrender while fully immersed in the emotion, we are giving that story our attention and agreement. At some point, we have to stop and ask: What am I saying? What am I rehearsing? What am I placing into the atmosphere around my own life?
That line: “I’d rather live in his world than live without him in mine.”
At this point, that line from the movie Ghost, where Whoopi tells Demi, “Molly, you in danger, girl,” overrode the harmonious flow of the song.
The song took me back to an idea I explored in another article about being the star of your own show. This woman would rather become a co-star in his failing series than remain the star of her own. She recognizes that his plan did not work and responds by attaching her life to his next move.
I understand that decision because I have been on that train. I arranged my life around another person’s direction. I was the committed co-star, fully invested and ready to do the damn thing. At the time, that felt like love, loyalty, and partnership.
Life experience has changed my interpretation.
"One day I realized these lyrics were actually a love song to myself."
I no longer believe devotion requires a woman to surrender authorship of her own life. A relationship can be part of her world without becoming the entire setting of it. She can love someone deeply and still remain committed to what she is building, becoming, and creating for herself.
At this point in my life, I do not want to be anybody’s co-star. This era of my being is about what I am being, doing, and having for me. The people I love can travel beside me, but I am responsible for remaining present in my own life.
None of this makes me love Midnight Train to Georgia any less. Although Jim Weatherly wrote the song, Gladys Knight gives voice to a role many women have played: the woman willing to make a man’s direction her own in the name of love. Ms. Knight’s artistry is evident in how completely she communicates what that woman may have felt at that moment, even if her decision is not one we would make today. The power of that performance earned Gladys Knight & the Pips a Grammy and carried the song to No. 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B charts. Midnight Train to Georgia remains a beautiful song and a genuine lesson in life.
Gladys Knight remains one of my favorite vocalists. Her voice is unmistakable. Like Chaka Khan, she has a sound you recognize immediately—strong, clear, and capable of making you feel every word. I could never reproduce the notes, the intonation, or the power, but singing along still exhilarates me.
The sound drew me into Midnight Train to Georgia.
Life made me hear the lyrics.
Now I can appreciate every note without accepting the destination.
I don’t organize these songs by genre. I organize them by what they woke up in me.
Listen to the:
Song: Midnight Train To Georgia
Artist: Gladys Knight & The Pips
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