Carry Me Away

Album: Working Class Dog (1981)
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Songfacts®:

  • In this album cut from Rick Springfield's Working Class Dog, he's all cattywampus over a girl, but afraid to fall in love. He puts his heart in her hands, telling her, "take me to heaven or to lead me to heartbreak." Like most of his songs, Springfield wrote it himself.
  • Springfield inserted a swear word into the lyric, which was generally frowned up in pop songs around this time:

    I'm so tired of all this s--t that I feel
    Show me something real


    "We slipped a few things by," he said in a Songfacts interview. "I don't throw swearing in other than when I think it really fits."
  • Thanks in part to the smash-hit single "Jessie's Girl," the album Working Class Dog was Springfield's break-out success - despite being the fifth studio album he'd released, after nearly a decade recording. He did have four prior singles that charted, however: "Speak to the Sky" (#14), "What Would the Children Think" (#70), "American Girls" (#98), and "Take a Hand" (#41).

    The album art shows a bull terrier dressed in working-class attire and sitting at a desk. That's actually Springfield's own pet dog, named Ronnie, who passed away in 1994. This photo garnered the album a 1981 Grammy nomination for Best Album Package. Working Class Dog was re-released on CD in 2006 as a 25th anniversary edition with three bonus tracks.

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