Daily Jam - To the End

My wife and I got married almost 16 years ago in an outdoor service cheekily dubbed the “Lakeside Inferno” by one of my groomsmen, a party held on a 90+ degree day in September by a lakeside vista to cap off about 9 years of dating, which is a kind of surreal thing for me to think about. So much has happened since then. But you should have seen us. Younger. Skinnier. Me with a stupid haircut. We had it all. And now we’re fast approaching a quarter century of being together, and if there’s been any kind of constant in all of that time, it’s been my attempt to get her to listen to and enjoy all of the music I love.

Before the wedding, we spent weeks trying to agree on a song for our first dance. And I enjoyed every second of that long and winding discussion, as we spent many a warm evening drinking beer, wine, or cocktails while I played track after track on the stereo at home. I forget how many tunes we considered as serious contenders, but there were certainly a few. Stevie Wonder’s “I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)” was a frontrunner for a while, but eventually fell to The Flamingos’ “I Only Have Eyes for You,” the song we both agreed felt right. That being said, I pushed hard for one of my favorite Blur songs, the wonderfully slinky “To the End” from 1994’s Parklife.

Recorded with additional uncredited vocals from Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier (another favorite), the song plays like a melancholy slow dance between two longtime lovers (here played by Sadier and Blur front man Damon Albarn) who have been through it all together, seen everything, and have maybe grown a little distant from each other as the years have passed them by. But they’re still together. And they’re still in love. It’s almost like a last dance.

Ultimately, we went another direction as we were in the market for a first dance, but you can bet I'll be playing “To the End” when it’s comes time for our last.

“You and I collapsed in love. And it looks like we might have made it. Yes, it looks like we’ve made it to the end.”