"Sugar Daddy"

I have listened to Fleetwood Mac countless times and yet somehow had never heard "Sugar Daddy." I had surely heard it since I have played the album that it's on many, many times. Somehow though the song never hit me, never registered as the beautiful thing that it is. I had never heard it.

Now, I have.

The song is penned by Christine McVie and she sings the vocals on it as well. This is probably how I came to overlook this song for so many years. In Fleetwood Mac's catalog of songs, I had mainly been drawn to the songs in which Stevie Nicks sings the vocals, enchanted like so many other people by the spell that Stevie Nicks is able to cast through her songs. But this song is so fantastic and the stuff that McVie does with her voice may be really subtle, but when you take the time to listen to what she is doing, there is so much emotion that she is pouring out into the world through this song, so much vulnerability on display.

A hard part of me softens and drips toward the floor when she sings, "All that I want is someone to take care of me. I'm not asking for much, just a little sympathy."

The song works so perfectly and has had me under its spells for the last two days. I played it on repeat the whole time I was commuting around the city yesterday, played it as I was going to work, as I was going to school, as I was traveling home on that journey back from school late at night that always takes way too long.

And, yes, I can relate to the song in its distinction between the man that gives you money and the man that gives you love, but that theme of the song barely even registers for me. What I hear instead is how in love she is with the person who gives her loving: "Cause I've got you baby, and you give me all the love I need. Yes, you give me all the love I need."

I miss that. I miss feeling that way, having someone to feel that way about, having someone give you all the love you need, being able to say that, being satisfied and full and feeling like you have someone in this world. I started crying on the train home last night listening to this song, but in the best way possible. I was overcome with emotion, which is a fantastic thing - you couldn't ask for more than that. Sure, yes, you could ask for those emotions to be the ones in which you are loved and love, but even the emotions where you feel melancholy while longing for such a state are great things - proof that you are alive still, that you are experiencing a heightened form of emotional awareness, that you are actively present in this world.

The song ends and I play it right back again. I do this until I get to my destination. I am trying to get somewhere, to get places. The music helps.