Secret Separation

Album: Walkabout (1985)
Charted: 19
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Songfacts®:

  • This was released as the first single from the English New Wave group The Fixx' fourth album, Walkabout. Like many of their songs, it did better in the US than in the UK. The tune only reached #83 in the band's native country, but across the Atlantic it topped the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart and peaked at #19 on the Hot 100.
  • The lyrics were written by Jeanette Obstoj, who was the girlfriend at the time of the band's producer, Rupert Hine. She directed several of the band's videos, including the ones for "Stand or Fall," "One Thing Leads to Another" and "Are We Ourselves?."
  • The song is about reincarnation. The Fixx singer and lyricist Cy Curnin told us in an interview: "It's about soulmates re-meeting in another time and continually re-meeting, and when they meet sometimes they can't function as lovers in this life, but they have been lovers in a past life or maybe a future life. Therefore the love affair continues through the ages."
  • The Fixx are not known for their love songs, but according to Curnin this song is played at wedding receptions, which he commented to us, "is very strange."

Comments: 2

  • Steve from SomewhereinamericaSounds like a poem I wrote when at age 15, sent to a girl in England to proof it. She died in a car wreck so I lost the poem.
  • Wearenotperfect from SomewhereinamericaMore of a constant battle between two individuals that can't be together but at the same time can't be apart. A sense that one individual knows that their relationship is not what it used to be and is only maintained because of the history they have made together and the other only wonders what it may have been like if they had taken a different path only to realize that their sharaid must continue to please their surroundings.
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