Let's talk about....BEAUTIFUL CHILD...

singatnight · #1 07-24-2009, 10:20 AM

Let's talk about.....BEAUTIFUL CHILD....what a beautiful song!

1. It is such a beautiful song, but one that is hard to understand.....Just like Sara isn't really about Sara..beautiful child isn't about a real child...lol.

2. It's another really sad Stevie song in my opinion....about an unattainable relationship/love. One she once had, but can no longer keep for some reason.
" I wish that you were mine"
"Your hands held mine so few hours"

3.So who is the love???? Before I really analyzed the song, I would immediately say Mick (the beautiful, playful, prankster child). But I don't know now.....Does Stevie do this to us on purpose??? DEFINITELY.
I think there is alot of Lindsey & FM in here too.
"Your eyes said yes, but you don't say yes"- She is always referencing Lindsey's eyes.
"I had to stay" -Even though her & lindsey broke up, she had to be around, stay in FM.

4. Does the rest of the band view/treat Stevie as a child?I read before that she didn't have much of a say in FM and that her opinions didn't matter.
"Im not a child anymore" - Is she going to stand up for herself? Is she thinking about going solo? A change has come.

5. Too trusting, yes...but women usually are......Poor Stevie!! This line makes me feel bad for her!!! This girl has been riding the rollercoaster of love her entire life.

So what do you think??? Please share.

galestreet · #2 07-24-2009, 12:11 PM

I think this song is about Lindsey. Maybe some of the references go back to high school in the first part, not really sure. I bite my lip, can you turn me away, sounds again to me like Lindsey. I guess the whole song reminds me of Lindsey.

That's just my take

michelej1 · #3 07-24-2009, 01:42 PM

The "I wish that you were mine" just seems like it's about a man she can't have. So, I don't think it's Lindsey. I know Lindsey was dating someone, but I don't think that would make him inaccessible like a man with a wife and children would be.

I wouldn't necessarily think Mick, but from the timing of the song and the words, I guess he's a logical assumption. I think she said she wrote it on some Sunday night in about 1978. I'd say it falls into the very beginning of their relationship. Maybe they just intended for it to be a one night thing for it not to hurt Jenny and maybe that's when she wrote it, when she didn't think that they would continue to see each other.

But the way the song is written, you get the impression that the man is so resistant and I don't think Mick was -- at least not from what he has said. The man in the song seems to have more moral qualms than Mick does. Plus, I really take loving from afar literally, rather than just figuratively. I just get the impression of people keeping their PHYSICAL and emotional distance from each other. So, I just don't think it's a band mate. I see it more as someone like Tom Petty. I just have to conclude it's about someone we don't know, not Mick or Lindsey.

Michele

FMlex · #4 07-24-2009, 02:19 PM

I love this rock and roll lullaby (as Stevie says)!!!
I definitely like to think it's about Lindsey, even if it isn't really.

"I'm not a child anymore
I'm tall enough
To reach for the stars
I'm old enough
To love you from afar"
^She knows that it is over for them. Permanently. There's no chance of going back to the way things were. So for the rest of time she will have to love him from a distance.

This quote is from Stevie from August 1982:
"We tangle a lot, but we love each other ~ we'll always love each other. He and I will never get away from the fact that we were as one for so many years."

This video is beautiful:

Damn, I'm gonna have to watch some Live in Boston tonight!

wheart · #5 07-24-2009, 02:29 PM

This song is heartbreakingly beautiful...my favorite FM ballad for sure and possibly my favorite Stevie penned ballad (tied perhaps with BATB). The vocal, the simple production, the arrangment and those amazing layers of Stevie's, Chris' and Lindsey's voices towards the end all make this song flawless. This song is about loss but, as with many of Stevie's songs, there's probably much more to it than that. After listening to Beautiful Child hundreds of times, I still haven't figured it out...and that's fine with me.

"I'm old enough to love you from afar..."

michelej1 · #6 07-24-2009, 03:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wheart

The vocal, the simple production, the arrangment and those amazing layers of Stevie's, Chris' and Lindsey's voices towards the end all make this song flawless.

Great on the album and the layering worked so well live too. There were many times during the recent tours that I didn't think the back up singers contributed much, but on this song they really did. When you've got Stevie singing one line, and Lindsey intercutting with his while the back up singers are singing something else, it really lifted the song to a rousing end. The arrangement enhanced the longing in the lyrics.

Michele

Tango · #7 07-24-2009, 04:00 PM

It's definitely good to have fresh perspectives on these songs-I thought I would put up a link to an old one done here on The Ledge:

http://discog.fleetwoodmac.net/songs.php?sid=626

There are interpretations for most of these songs under discussion.

daniellaaarisen · #8 07-24-2009, 04:40 PM

Hey look, I'm officially promoted to an Addicted Ledgie!

In terms of "Beautiful Child"... this song is the perfect example of my own personal opinion on Stevie's songwriting. Sometimes, there is a definite source-- for instance, we all knowthat "Silver Girl" is about Sheryl Crow. Stevie wrote it with the intention for it to be about Sheryl Crow. Therefore, the song is undoubtedly about Sheryl Crow.

There are few Stevie songs that have the same concrete origin. Like "Gold Dust Woman" and "Sara", I think that "Beautiful Child" is MUCH more introspective of a song than we give it credit for. I think that there are aspects of the lyrics that strongly support many different relationships of hers-- ranging from Mick to Lindsey all the way to Tom Petty, as Michele pointed out.

I personally think that "Beautiful Child" was written when Stevie was going through a pretty big realization about herself. I think the catalyst for that realization was her relationship with Mick, but that does not mean the song is solely about Mick.

The song starts with her calling herself a "fool once more" right from the first verse. She's realizing that there is something within herself that is causing an issue within her relationships. Whether its her tendency to be a die-hard romantic or something more, one can only guess.

I think the relationship she kinda plays out for us is a combination of many different things she has experienced and how they attribute to the shattering of any relationship she forms. A bit of it is Lindsey, a bit of it is Mick, a bit of it is someone we don't know. The end of the song ("I'm not a child anymore...") shows that the real purpose isn't to speak TO a particular person (drastically unlike "Silver Springs"), but to speak to herself. She only uses the relationship to show what her relationships typically pan out to be.

To be brief: the song is about her, IMO, not a man. It's about her not being a child anymore, about her being tall enough to reach for the stars.

Seems to me like everything with Mick (if this was written right before Tusk) sparked her to realize that love isn't always perfect and sometimes, you must let it go. She realized it was time to grow up and be dependent on no one but herself.

I was obsessed with this song during a time where I did a lot of growing up way too fast, so maybe this interpretation is simply because the song hit me from that angle. I donno.

CADreaming · #9 07-24-2009, 05:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by michelej1

Great on the album and the layering worked so well live too. There were many times during the recent tours that I didn't think the back up singers contributed much, but on this song they really did. When you've got Stevie singing one line, and Lindsey intercutting with his while the back up singers are singing something else, it really lifted the song to a rousing end. The arrangement enhanced the longing in the lyrics.

Michele

I agree the harmonies were beautiful in themselves, but I still feel a stab of pain and joy when I hear SnL's harmony on the original recording. Their voices will always sound great together, but their younger voices were the height of perfection, imo.

Quote:

Originally Posted by michelej1

The "I wish that you were mine" just seems like it's about a man she can't have. So, I don't think it's Lindsey. I know Lindsey was dating someone, but I don't think that would make him inaccessible like a man with a wife and children would be....

But the way the song is written, you get the impression that the man is so resistant and I don't think Mick was -- at least not from what he has said. The man in the song seems to have more moral qualms than Mick does. Plus, I really take loving from afar literally, rather than just figuratively. I just get the impression of people keeping their PHYSICAL and emotional distance from each other. So, I just don't think it's a band mate. I see it more as someone like Tom Petty. I just have to conclude it's about someone we don't know, not Mick or Lindsey.

Michele

My song interpretation...

She uses the term children or child a lot and in this lyric, child is used as a loving term for someone who is still an innocent.

Notice in the lyrics, she opens with calling someone (I lean towards LB, this is a commonly used term with both of them), a "beautiful child". (Note: Stevie constantly refers to him as "beautiful" and even in LRD he is referred to as a child)...

Sleepless child
There is so little time

Didn't CAH mention LB having trouble sleeping because he was constantly hearing music in his head?

Later, after the loss of her innocence, she admits she is not a child anymore:

You say it will be harder in the morning
I wait for you to say, "Just go"
Your hands held mine so few hours
And I'm not a child anymore

The ending of the song gives the impression she may never be able to be with this person again because it was forbidden. She even says, "I will do as I'm told". But, I don't hear this as being from the lover. To me, it seems that the two are kept apart, and in this regard, it reminds me of Edge. I am guessing the Buckinghams' and the Nicks' may have been disapproving (in the very least) of a blossoming love affair between SnL and could have tried to nip it in the proverbial bud.

On the SYW tour, she ended the song with: "I still need you, I do love you..."

LikeAWillow · #10 07-24-2009, 06:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by daniellaaarisen

To be brief: the song is about her, IMO, not a man. It's about her not being a child anymore, about her being tall enough to reach for the stars.

.

I completely agree with this. Stevie has said that not all of her songs are completely autobiographical...that sometimes, she starts with something she's feeling or a friend is going through (not that I actually believe she ever looks beyond herself

, but I'll humour her for a moment) and then she builds a story around those starting emotions.

Beautiful Child seems to me a beautiful progression from a woman dealing with her own feelings of getting older, losing her bright eyed innocence (beginning affairs with married men, ending a relationship she had been in since she was young and that she considered marriage), and starting to take a more realistic, even a more cynical, view of the world around her to channeling those emotions into an artistic form. I'm sure that Lindsey, Mick, Don, and anyone else she ever cared for romantically is in there because you don't produce the emotion she does on her vocal without some sort on anchor in truth, but at the end of the day, I believe Beautiful Child is the character Stevie dealing with a character man who represents all the turmoil in her mind. I don't think she's really wishing he was hers, I think she's just identifying with a woman whose story she has created in her mind.

When you read Kate Chopin's The Awakening, you don't assume that Kate is prepared to drown herself to escape the chains of society, but you think she just might understand why someone would.

michelej1 · #11 07-24-2009, 06:37 PM

By the time the song reached the SYW tour, when she sang the "I wish that you were mine" part, I do think she often was actually talking to a child, wishing it were hers. It didn't have that meaning when she wrote it, but with the passage of time and her childbearing years, menopause, etc., I believe the song grew into that meaning.

Michele

LikeAWillow · #12 07-24-2009, 06:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by michelej1

By the time the song reached the SYW tour, when she sang the "I wish that you were mine" part, I do think she often was actually talking to a child, wishing it were hers. It didn't have that meaning when she wrote it, but with the passage of time and her childbearing years, menopause, etc., I believe the song grew into that meaning.

Michele

I can see what you mean. From anecdotes I've heard, I don't think that in her heart of hearts, Stevie regrets missing out on having children, but in the drama of the moment, it would be easy to get swept up in emotion.

Lala · #13 07-24-2009, 07:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by daniellaaarisen

Hey look, I'm officially promoted to an Addicted Ledgie!

I was obsessed with this song during a time where I did a lot of growing up way too fast, so maybe this interpretation is simply because the song hit me from that angle. I donno.

Congrats on the Addicted Ledgie status!

Yes...I had a similar experience with this song. In my teens, in the span of less than 2 years I experienced a series of losses...basically a lot of things and people that meant a lot to me. I really had to grow up and figure out who I was. Anyway, during that time, my trilogy of comforting songs was probably Sara, Storms and Beautiful Child...probably Gypsy as well. But that's what Beautiful Child means to me, personally.

I've always just assumed the song is mostly about Mick, since it seems to be detailing a one night stand/short term relationship. I guess it makes sense that there's some Lindsey in there too.

Probably one of my favourite complete Stevie lyrics. So many great lines...

You are a beautiful child...and I am a fool once more

I bite my lip...can you send me away
You touch, I have no choice, I have to stay

You say it will be harder in the morning
I wait for you to said "Just go"

I'm old enough to love you from afar
Too trusting, yes, but then women usually are

And the way she ended it during the SYW tour was wonderful.

I do love you...I still need you...I wish, I wish that you were mine

I always sing it that way now.

And I kind of think THAT part is about Lindsey.

daniellaaarisen · #14 07-24-2009, 08:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LikeAWillow

I completely agree with this. Stevie has said that not all of her songs are completely autobiographical...that sometimes, she starts with something she's feeling or a friend is going through (not that I actually believe she ever looks beyond herself

, but I'll humour her for a moment) and then she builds a story around those starting emotions.

Beautiful Child seems to me a beautiful progression from a woman dealing with her own feelings of getting older, losing her bright eyed innocence (beginning affairs with married men, ending a relationship she had been in since she was young and that she considered marriage), and starting to take a more realistic, even a more cynical, view of the world around her to channeling those emotions into an artistic form. I'm sure that Lindsey, Mick, Don, and anyone else she ever cared for romantically is in there because you don't produce the emotion she does on her vocal without some sort on anchor in truth, but at the end of the day, I believe Beautiful Child is the character Stevie dealing with a character man who represents all the turmoil in her mind. I don't think she's really wishing he was hers, I think she's just identifying with a woman whose story she has created in her mind.

When you read Kate Chopin's The Awakening, you don't assume that Kate is prepared to drown herself to escape the chains of society, but you think she just might understand why someone would.

Bingo.

And I love The Awakening, as a sidenote.

daniellaaarisen · #15 07-24-2009, 08:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by michelej1

By the time the song reached the SYW tour, when she sang the "I wish that you were mine" part, I do think she often was actually talking to a child, wishing it were hers. It didn't have that meaning when she wrote it, but with the passage of time and her childbearing years, menopause, etc., I believe the song grew into that meaning.

Michele

So true... yet so, so depressing.