Lights going out
Lights being put out, the rooms, lamps, porch lights, headlights or windows that go dark at a turning point in the song. The gesture splits two ways. As intimacy, the dark comes before the embrace, the headlights are cut, the lights left off as the couple steps into private space. As surrender or fear, the speaker switches off the lamp after driving home alone, the vigil light is finally extinguished, the room goes dark and the breath goes with it. The action is the same; what differs is whether what comes after the dark is held or lost.
Putting out the light marks a deliberate line the song turns on, the moment one state ends and another begins. It can be the protective dark of intimacy, the privacy that lets a moment happen unseen, or the closing-down of hope, the watcher who stops watching, the lamp whose vigil is over. The song often saves the gesture for its last image or its pivot: the act of switching off is itself the decision the song has been moving towards.
Appears in 10 songs
“But the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light”
The song's final image, the woman who sits by the window turning out the light, activates the catalogue-wide extinguishment gesture in its surrender / closure-of-hope register. The vigil-lamp that has burned across the song (the lamp let burn at the Windows observation on 'I let the lamp burn') is extinguished as the speaker accepts that the fantasy has ended. Pairs with the catalogue's intimacy-register lights-out (Style, You Are In Love, Dancing With Our Hands Tied) as the same gesture's opposing charge, the closure of hope rather than the protection of privacy.
“When the lights go out, it's hard to breathe”
When the lights go out it is hard to breathe, the speaker says of the person she is trying to keep safe. The dark is not intimacy here but fear, the moment the light fails standing in for the moment the worry becomes too much.
“And they called off the circus, burned the disco down”
The burning of the disco and the removal of the spotlight represent the moment the speaker's reflective function ceases, the lights going out as the end of performance and the existential crisis of a performer without an audience to reflect.
“So I drive home alone, as I turn out the light”
The song ends on the speaker driving home alone and turning out the light, the small last action that closes the night on a love that was never hers. Switching off the lamp is the surrender the whole song has been moving towards, the light out and the hope with it.
“Island breeze and lights down low, no one has to know”
With the lights down low, no one has to know. The dimmed light buys the secrecy the couple wants, the low light and the hidden romance folded into one line.
“I'd kiss you as the lights went out”
The kiss is timed to the lights going out, the room going dark around it. The same dark that shelters the kiss also closes the scene, the lights out as the room burns down.
“Candle wax and Polaroids on the hardwood floor”
The burned-down candles and their residual wax mark the transition from celebration to aftermath, the light of the party has gone out, leaving only the mess behind. The extinguished light signals the shift from New Year's Eve to New Year's Day.
“Takes me home, lights are off, he's taking off his coat”
He takes her home with the lights already off, and the coat comes off in the dark. Leaving the lights off is what lets the moment happen unseen, a private space stepped into rather than switched on. (The "no headlights" line earlier in the song sits with the car imagery.)
“You could see it with the lights out, lights out”
The certainty of the love is something you can see even with the lights out. Darkness usually hides things; here it is where the truth is most plainly felt, the light switched off and the knowing left intact.
“As the lights go down”
As the lights go down the speaker moves in close and runs her fingers through his hair. The dark is the cue for intimacy here, the moment the setting dims and the private one begins.