Song #7: Jim Croce’s Time In A Bottle

Why I Picked It: This song came to mind a few weeks ago and I was reminiscing about high school choir – we sang a choral arrangement of it and I didn’t know how it actually sounded until years later when I in college.  My H.S. biology teacher Mr. Clark was quick to jab on facebook that I wasn’t old enough to reminisce about the song!

Why I Like It: The guitar fingering and the message is just soothing.  It’s a song about how the singer wishes he can provide for his subject with so many impossible things:  “If I could save time in a bottle/the first thing that I’d like to do/is to save every day ’til eternity passes away/just to spend them with you…”

But there’s also an understanding of reality: “But there never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them.”

And the reality mixed with that romantic sentiment: “I looked around enough to know that you’re the one I want to go through time with.”

In writing this, I read the Wikipedia article about Jim Croce.  I hadn’t realized he had died at such a young age, which makes his song about time and its lovely sentiments just ring all the more true.  If anything, perhaps he did figure out how to save time in a bottle, with his music that carries on all these years after him.

I had a hard time easily finding a Youtube of it, but here’s  a nice homage Muppets style:

-cct