The Smile Has Left Your Eyes by Asia

Album: Alpha (1983)

Charted: 81 34

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Songfacts®:

John Wetton wrote this about his bandmate Geoff Downes. In a 1983 magazine interview, Wetton said: "He was going through a complete emotional turmoil over a girl about a year and a half ago, and I identified so strongly that I went home and wrote the song in five minutes. Boom! Sat right down at the piano and there it was. If anything's straight from the heart, that song is."
Asia played this (along with "Midnight Sun") on their first tour in 1982 before the Alpha album was released.
The B-side of the single was "Lying To Yourself," which did not appear on the Alpha album and was guitarist Steve Howe's only writing contribution to the album. This track wasn't released on CD until the 2000 compilation The Very Best of Asia: Heat of the Moment 1982-90. >>>
Suggestion credit:
Steve - Torrance, CA, for all above

Comments: 4

Dennis from New JerseyThis album may have sold poorly, but the video for this song is outstanding, and the very last 2 seconds of the video send a chill down my spine every time!
Honcho from VaSam Fields "the album did so poorly John Wetton took offense and bit the hand that feeds"-- how can an album include a track blaming another person for selling poorly, John Wetton could see into the future? That's utter gibberish. Alpha went platinum in the U.S., by the way.
Sam FieldsThis was the album that sank Asia's lively hood. Alpha from Asia sold very poorly in 1983. Even with Mike Stone being Producer over the sessions. Geffen Records played a HUGE PART into this album. So much so that every track sounded like a filler and no single anywhere on the record. John Wetton was pushed into writing a song or theme/idea that CEO David Geffen and others thought they could push that would exemplify a more progressive lifestyle that nobody would ever thought about it was being brought into the open. But "The Smile Has Left Your Eyes" is actually a song about David Geffen and his lifestyle and because the album did so poorly John Wetton took offense and bit the hand that feeds. John Wetton unfortunately didn't know how to handle this situation and that's why Geffen Records and top executives at the label fired him and Asia never got support or recognition and radio airplay after this situation. Listen to the lyrics to The Smile Has Left Your Eyes...there's something wrong with those lyrics it's not about any band member or boy meets girl relationship....
Danielle from Palm Coast, Flawww... so sad i saw the music video and some what related to it when my parents got a divorce.for those of you how do not know the story the mother kept her daughter from seeing her father through their divorce. and the little girl committed suicided. it shows how powerful a divorce is the part that said the smile has left your eyes is referring to her daughter. don t know what to call my own refers to how his daughter is forbidden to see him and he is questions if she is really hir daughter and his own but
I never thought I'd see you
Standing there with him
So don't come crawling
Back to me
refers to the wife and he sees her with another man and it bounces back and forth through out the song to the daughters sadness to the fathers sadness. and to partly to the wife.

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