Only the Ocean

Album: To The Sea (2010)
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the closing track from Hawaiian singer-songwriter Jack Johnson's fifth studio album, To The Sea. Johnson told Gibson.com both the album title and this song are inspired by memories of his late father, the well-known surfer Jeff Johnson. "The title of the album felt very natural title to use this time around," he explained. "The obvious appeal is that it's a phrase that sounds nice when you say it, but I was also thinking of a body of water representing the subconscious. The sea is a place my father led me to, and it's a place I've taken my own children. You get to the shoreline and you make the decision whether to dive under the surface or not. That works on a lot of levels. On the most personal level, when my father died, we took his ashes to the sea. The last song on the record is called 'Only the Ocean' and that's really a song for my father. Every time I go to the ocean now I feel like I'm visiting him."

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