Singer-songwriter Jackie DeShannon, whose credits include writing “When You Walk Into a Room,” singing “What the World Needs Now Is Love” and inspiring this blog’s tagline, released a lyric video for “Vanished in Time” on Friday; the song itself was released in 2000 on her You Know Me album, the video was first shared last year (sans lyrics) – while the single, which doesn’t sound like a re-recording to my ears, was issued on Friday. Why now? Who knows?
Those questions aside, it’s an interesting song for a few reasons, but chief among them: It’s a paean to a way of life that’s long since passed. As she sings in the first verse, “The flag is still waving/As the box cars roll by/Don’t look for the heartland/It’s vanished in time…”
The world we remember is rarely the world, writ large, that was, a difference that can cause dissonance and defensiveness when and/or if long-held beliefs are challenged. That’s grist for another post somewhere down the line, however. To get back on point, I’ll say that – musically and thematically – “Vanished in Time” is akin to a letter mailed from pre-9/11 America to the present.
That doesn’t make it any less relevant, mind you. For good and ill, yearning for years long ago, romanticizing the good and glossing over the bad, has been part and parcel of this thing called life from the very start. Every generation is the last of a dying breed, just as every succeeding generation faces the same basic quandaries and questions as their forebears. “Vanished in Time” conveys a wistfulness for the past – and it’s that very wistfulness that makes it worth a listen.
