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Touch, Eurythmics

RCA Records, November 26, 1983

Track Listing: 1. Here Comes the Rain Again, 2. Regrets, 3. Right By Your Side, 4. Cool Blue, 5. Who’s That Girl?, 6. he First Cut, 7. Aqua, 8. No Fear, No Hate, No Pain (No Broken Hearts), 9. Paint a Rumour


A sweet summer kiss brushes the dewy lips of a woman in love, light as the gentle contact of a leaf skimming across a pool of water.

“Don’t touch me, don’t talk to me about it
Don’t touch me, don’t talk to me, ever again
I don’t feel anything
All sensation is closed to me”

-from Aqua

His hand reaches for her silky palm, which stirs fragrant wafts of the vanilla spice moisture cream she works so evenly into her skin that the scent is a permanent signature, an olfactory tattoo, marking her presence and comforting him in the way stepping into a bakery causes customers to inhale deeply with gorging appetite. He takes the ring and slides it onto her slender finger. The fit is perfect.

“You’ve got the killing gun
Held in your hand
It feels like cold cold steel”

-fromNo Fear, No Hate, No Pain (No Broken Hearts)

He asks, “Will you marry me?”

She says, “Yes. Yes, I will.”

They embrace, hugging destiny between them tighter than their physical being.

“Give me two strong arms
To protect myself”

-from Right By Your Side

She declares how blessed she feels because he gives her greater happiness than she thought another human ever would. He asserts that he is the fortunate one; her tenderness and understanding sets the example toward which he strives. They vow to remain truthful. Neither has been surer that the key to a lasting relationship is open communication, the access to eternity.

“The language of love
Has left me stony grey
Tongue tied and twisted”

-from Who’s That Girl?

The temperature at noon surpasses the morning forecast. A cloudless sky surrenders unlimited sunshine to warm the air circulating around her pulsing heart for the duration of the drive to the drugstore and back. The day is sharp and clear, just like the solid line appearing across the pregnancy strip she now holds poised above the toilet. The first of a stream of tears trickles down her face, then her arm, and into the bowl.

“Here comes the rain again
Falling on my hand like a memory
Falling on my hand like a new emotion”

-from Here Comes the Rain Again

Nearing forty years of marriage and nurturing their two children into respectable adults, she still relives the passion of their first kiss in every “welcome home,” “thank-you,” and “good-night” since. He continues to delight in detection of her aromatic traces, which linger in the bathroom long after she showers, imbue their bedroom linens and transfer to his self at their faintest touch. He reflects on how her saccharin essence has evolved over time into vapors distinctly more botanical: Stepping inside is no longer like entering a confectionery but as natural as breathing the garden air at the lakeside park where they met.

Sometime during their life together, they must have had disagreements. The power of forgiveness, however, has kept anger and resentment renounced to the past and a bucolic future locked as their eulogy.

“And old scores
Never settle down
I’ll keep on walking
Till I’m buried in the cold ground”

-from The First Cut

Dreamers, they are.

-MEG