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WEBMISTRESS speculates:
This song is so beautiful, so moving, so tragic...it's one of my favorites of Stevie's unreleased songs. The message of the song, I believe, is simple: she still loves Lindsey (now, some people say this song is about Joe Walsh, but I'm just going to go with the Lindsey angle since there's no proof either way). She always considered Lindsey to be one of the "great loves" of her life, even after she left him and they both were with other people. Accordingly, the song starts out very sad. No one knows how much she misses him - but even if they did, they wouldn't like it. Perhaps she feels people (maybe even Lindsey) have grown tired of hearing her dwell on it so much, or impatient with her for mourning a love she ended. These kind of attitudes make her realize that no one understands the way she loves him; no one can see past the ugly breakup that she initiated.
But when she says, "'Til his dying day, not even he himself can change this...she loves him still" she is expressing the greatest type of love - the unconditional kind. She's saying no matter what he does, no matter how badly he treats her, no matter if he loves her or hates her, she will still love him. That is a great tribute to Lindsey, I must say, that he can inspire that kind of love, and it also says a lot about the depth of their relationship.
In the next verse, she talks of missing having Lindsey as a friend as well, and not just as a lover. They were friends before they were lovers, but when their relationship ended, that ended, too. I doubt she got to see Lindsey smile much in the aftermath, and that made her sad. Then she adds that no one can understand him, but that doesn't matter to her. The implication here is that his complexity is one of the things she loved about him, as directly after that statement, she repeats that she still loves him. Even after so much time has passed, she still can't get over him, even though, again, she was the one who ended it. The sea reference at the end reminds me of Crystal, that love song from the Buckingham Nicks era, a time when they were still madly in love. Also, this same phrasing is used for lines in Trouble in Shangri-La, another song I believe to be about Lindsey.
When one listens to this song today, it packs an extra punch in light of the fact now that Lindsey is married and permanently off the market (as we gals like to say), they'll never get back together. Though she may still love him, their relationship now will never be more than platonic. Not to imply that she's going around clutching a photo of Lindsey to her breast and weeping herself to sleep - after all, it's not like there was a big chance they would ever get together again anyway. Even so, there is a psychological difference between a slim chance and no chance at all, and that difference might have hurt her heart just a little bit. But despite all that, it all comes back to the fact that "she loves him still."
CHRISSIE speculates:
This song hits so close to home. It's just the way I feel about the love of my life and always will. Even though we are no longer together he is forever locked in my heart and my soul....and I know even now when I see him and our eyes meet he can see that, "She loves him still......"
24 Karat Gold | SN Albums