"Aubrey" – Bread (1972)

Here is a song that captures my heart. It makes me sway, mindless to everything except the words and its daydream. In less than four minutes, the pure magic of David Gates is completely encompassed. Is it rare to find a song whose music perfectly matches its lyrics, whose melody is not overly vain, nor underdeveloped? Every particle of this song’s light is warm and dances like the manifestation of art itself.

They say to write from experience. This song proves that wrong. Gates did not live this song’s story beat for beat. Is it possible he knew an unrequited love? Of course; and most of us do. This song, though, is about loving someone from afar, of admiring them for their entire being, starting with their name, and longing for a daydream. It exists in an imagined state, yet when I listen to it, I feel those beats as pulse, as ties to a real human heart.

Who was Aubrey? What makes her so divine to this singer, yet down to earth that he just wanted to be near her, to know a small, barely-there connection that he can remember? How can I be more like her?

This is the song you listen to on a swing in a rainstorm, dipping your toe in the ground to keep momentum. This is the song that you lose yourself in.

“And Aubrey was her name,

We tripped the light and danced together to the moon.

But where was June?”

Poetry is quite distinctive in songs, I’ve found. It’s rare; unexpected from an art form derivative of the Greek muses. It stands out to me whenever I find it. I find myself frequently asking, what happened to intricate creations, rich with music theory, full of symmetry, and brimming with language rather than “bops?” I hear classical and baroque songs and think: This is still poetry without the words. In music, poetry seems to take on a different meaning with the instruments, emotions, and lyrics. “Aubrey” captures this meaning.

Gates’ words are transformed, made alive by the instruments; the strings lighten the verses, drawing them up to the refrains. In fact, they formulate a crucial aspect to the chorus, starting in the very beginning of the song and crescendoing just past the halfway mark. The lyrics themselves are calm, contemplative, tinged with wistfulness. They alternate between verse and pre-chorus, and the strings take over as a short, yet magnetic chorus.

This strikes me as an unusual song structure, especially these days, where the chorus is the main attraction of a song. But “Aubrey” is a slice of something. Why would it need to rise to a catchy, “bopping” chorus that repeats, why would a chord change be needed, why would a bridge be included? The song is a muse. It’s pure. It’s small. It’s not meant to be lingered in longer than its confines.

“Aubrey” is a quintessential love song. It’s not grotesque, not centered on lust and physical pleasure; rather it’s love that takes over the words and subtext. Like a misty sunset, it takes a word that is too big to even feel in its completion, and places a piece of it in your sights. And love captures even the instrumentals. The guitar sounds like cautious steps forward, the bass like an unsteady heart, the strings like crying or reaching out toward the girl. And the bell? It is as if the singer is checking himself against his daydream: no, it’s not to be, so I’m stuck in longing.

It’s songs like this that are uncommon. Where did poetry go when talking about love? Where is the fantasy of metaphor hiding? Emotion does not thrive on realistic descriptors; it craves comparisons to mark its existence.

“Like a lovely melody that everyone can sing,

Take away the words that rhyme, it doesn’t mean a thing.”

Really, this is a heart wrenching piece of music. It’s gentle in its breaking, near silent in Gates’ angelic voice. The kindness there seems to distract from the truth, and wraps you in stunning beauty. It’s there, though. Longing is unresolved pain. It’s beautiful, raw, incomplete.

The most beautiful melody David Gates ever wrote.

A/N: I wrote this for Angela Hepworth’s Music Challenge. Thank you for reading!