True Companion

Album: Marc Cohn (1991)
Charted: 80
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Songfacts®:

  • Ready for a love story that will melt your heart? When Cohn was touring in 1991, he would introduce "True Companion" with some version of this story:

    "Here's a tune that I wrote in the back seat of a cab going to meet my girlfriend. I'd been living with her for about seven years and all she asked me the last three was, 'How come we're not yet?'" (female audience members murmur knowingly) "I didn't really have the answer and I wrote this before I knew that I was ready to be a married man. Songs kind of tell you where you're at sometimes. I sang this tune to her in the restaurant and I was excited because I thought it was a great lyric and she was excited because she thought it was a proposal." (laughter) "Men are scum!" (more laughter) "OK, I'm scum. But it worked out in the end. We did get married and we have a baby boy now, six months old." (lots of applause)

    Sorry to be a buzzkill, but sadly this union did not last. The couple divorced in the late '90s, and in 2002 Cohn married the TV journalist Elizabeth Vargas. His two children from his first marriage attended the wedding, and his son Max, who he talked about on stage, was his best man.
  • This is one of the most popular wedding songs of all time. For couples looking for a contemporary song about finding that magical person to share your life as a lover and friend, it's a winner.
  • Cohn told Q magazine in 1992 that more than any of his other songs, this one borders on "queasy sentimentality." Said Cohn: "It's the guy thinking in ideal terms. I was still so ambiguous about marriage when I wrote it that it was a sort of wish-fulfillment song. And to be honest, I've only slowly grown towards the sort of feelings the song is about. I'm still not there."

Comments: 1

  • Rick from Indianapolis, InThere is another song with this exact name, by Donald Fagen. It was part of the soundtrack of the 1981 Movoe Heavy Metal. It played during the Harry Canyon segment.
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