Скачать или смотреть Jont - "Let's Just Be Friends" (Official Video)

Delighted to share this song and our 7th single this year with you. In some ways I feel it's quite daringly open. One of my favourite videos we've made too. Many thanks to Matt Ingraham for that. The Fish, as on all these songs, play their part perfectly.... and it's even one of my daughter's favourites... I think you're gonna like it. It speaks to an essential conundrum. I enjoyed writing some words about it and they are below and below them are the lyrics

X Jont

The Fish are Jon MacIsaac, Devin Shael Fox and Robert Sherwood

The video is directed by Matt Ingraham.

Where did Let’s Just Be Friends come from?


Late at night, sat up in bed with my guitar is how some of my best songs have come. Maybe it was always thus for all songwriters. Leonard Cohen doubtless spent many a night sat up in bed smoking Gauloises, channeling his eternal poetry. Perhaps Mr Dylan even today sits up late at night in a hoodie writing lyrics on an envelope as the muse flicks through his pen. And, with my cats Oscar and Buttons sat beside me, I can be found there too on occasion, up late, lights low and guitar in my lap writing something that has sprung out of me without warning and is demanding my attention.

So it was with Let’s Just Be Friends. You don’t have to be a genius to work out it’s a lovesong. And an autobiographical one at that. Sincere too in its message. Or maybe not sincere in the desire to stay as just friends. Just true in what it says about what happens when you don’t.

When love comes along, there ain’t much you can do. Even if one side of your brain is telling you all the reasons you shouldn’t do it, it’s so rare - that connection, when the other person looks back at you with exactly the same weight as you are looking at them. Ineffable really, the sensation of relief.

Hopefully some of that dreamy “ok-ness with everything” that is there when the flower first starts to open comes across in the song’s chorus…..”Right now the world is asleep, it’s just you and me counting sheep, we can’t afford to miss a beat, or no-one’ll know how many there have been”…. Purposely the romanticism of the chorus is in stark contrast to the pragmatic assumptions the same singer touts so convincingly in the verses.

This song marked the beginning of a beautiful time for me and its muse - that ended just like the song depressingly predicts. Sometimes it seems the songs know before I do how things are going to go. But we haven’t learnt the lesson until we have had enough of the pain. And though over the years the pain might at times have seemed almost too much to bear, it has also led directly to fruitful evenings, sat up late at night, guitar in lap as emotions alchemise and burnished, dissolve into a subtle and radiant joy.


Lyrics:

LET’S JUST BE FRIENDS

Let’s just be friends
We know how it goes
Better to pretend we don’t want anything
Then mess up again and wind up alone

Let’s just be friends we know how it goes
Right now I see you so clear but if I got near
It would all be just a blur

Right now the world is asleep
It’s just you and me counting sheep
We can’t afford to miss a beat
Or no-one’ll know how many there’ve been

And this whole game is planned
Nothing you can do but play your best hand
Predictable and perfect and true
The feeling I get when I am with you — ou ou ou ou
You — ou ou ou ou

Let’s just be friends
For once let’s be cool
‘Cos if we dive in
The stillness will end
We’ll just be those two fools in the pool

Let’s just be friends
Yeah we know how it goes
Right now we are free
And you can see me
And how I’m not your enemy

Right now the world is asleep
It’s just you and me counting sheep
We can’t afford to miss a beat
Or no-one’ll know how many there’ve been

And this whole game is planned
Nothing you can do but play your best hand
Predictable and perfect and true
The feeling I get when I am with you

What is love?
When you get away from all the heartache stuff?
Don’t wanna end up in a war that never ends
Oh can’t we be in love and just be frie - en - nds?
Be frie - en - nds?

Let’s just be friends
Yeah, we know how it goes
We've got something so rare
It’s easy to tear
A leaf made of gold

© 2024 Jont