There need to be more songs like this, I think; hopelessly romantic, but songs for non-lovers for whatever reason. The way the song sounds is gentle and stereotypically “love song”-ish, with Rhys’ warm voice and the simple arrangement that sounds old-fashioned (That falling piano!), but the lyrics are more… hurt, more guarded and that appeals to me. “I will always wonder/How life would be if we never had met/Things would be easier/But dull, I suspect,” he sings, in a line that always makes my heart break – Anyone who’s never felt like that, you’re lucky – before returning to the refrain for thwarted lovers in the chorus: “I never claimed you were mine/But if we were words, we would rhyme.”
It’s a wonderfully sweet song, but one that’s also staggeringly sad. Like I said, the world needs more songs like this, I think.