words/music by Jimmy Webb • arranged/performed by Doug Howell
© Universal – Polygram International Pub Inc.
Favorite version: Jimmy Webb, Letters, 1972
this is the answer to the letter unsent
which even so arrived some years later
like a song sometimes written for love
long before it is alive
oh, the poem sighed to sweet faces
caught away from some cold machine
leaving them no quieter time
to liken things to other things
trying to describe other things
now safe with the answer to a question unasked
that needed no reply – he is singing
a description of a song he cannot write
about how hard it is to cry
and are the words in the wrong places
or the spaces stumbling in between
or is there just no brighter time
to liken things to other things
trying to describe other things
Notes
This is the most beautiful song about writing a song I’ve ever heard, and I think it completely blurs the line between poetry and music. Songwriting has always been a mystical thing to me, and “Simile” lays bare that mystery like no other song I know. Check out page four of Tunesmith, Jimmy’s book on songwriting, to read some of the story behind the song.
Lonnie Hull DuPont, my over-five-decades-long poet/writer/songwriter/performer friend, one of the few bedrock friends I have been privileged to know, left us for more heavenly climes just last August. Lonnie sang the supporting vocals on this song, and I had her in mind from the beginning. I’m forever grateful she said yes. Although she’d never heard of the song, she absolutely fell in love with it as she was learning her part, and even included the lyrics in her journal. Lon had also added supporting vocals on several songs on The Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction, and one track on Singer in the King’s Service. We wrote often, and performed together many times through the years, including on the album Victory in Jesus. I’m currently helping her husband Joe post the few solo recordings we have from Lonnie on her YouTube channel.
Lonnie, I miss you terribly, and have a sacred spot in my studio where I keep all your letters. I will always love what you added to this song, and will never forget what you meant to my life.
I have always found Jimmy’s piano part on his original recording so mesmerizing in all its undulations, so wedded to the feeling and meaning of the song, that I’ve done my best to recreate it here (in a lower key, of course). I just couldn’t imagine substituting anything else.
The song cover image is an early draft of Shelley’s poem, “Love’s Philosophy” juxtaposed with a page from one of my own early songs, one that I believe expresses a very similar sentiment—one that tried quite unsuccessfully to describe those “other things.”
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