An older man's take on the song

I heard "Castles in the Air" along with everybody else back in the day. It struck me at the time was that the singer was a coward. Aside from that, the notion that the "cocktail generation" lived in an emotional desert didn't seem odd--it was in the air, and perhaps even overkill. Nobody I knew was into that kind of social climbing. It wasn't fashionable; easy to disdain. Mountains and forests cool, big city yuck.

I ran across the song today and the cowardice of it fairly screams now, and ... wait a minute, can we hear her side of this? McLean had some issues with wives; maybe there's some connection.

Maybe the sensuous nature of music makes it easier to just take the singer's word for what's going on.