100 Songs That Have Moved Me | Song #013: "Midnight Train to Georgia" (1973)

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Title: "Midnight Train to Georgia"
Artist: Gladys Knight & the Pips
Composer: Jim Weatherly
Producers: Tony Camillo, Gladys Knight, Merald "Bubba" Knight, Eddie Patten, William Guest
Release Date: August 1973
Peak Chart Position: #1 (Hot 100)
Album: Imagination (1973)

"" (Watch on YouTube)

Rolling Stone metadata:

Rank: #439

Blurb: Originally titled "Midnight Plane to Houston," the ode to long-distance romance from Mississippi songwriter Weatherly (who also wrote Knight's "Neither One of Us") became the biggest hit ever for Gladys Knight and the Pips. Cissy Houston had an R&B hit with it first, before Knight rode it to the top of the pop charts. (Source)

Words from the artist:

The theme of the song is how romantic love can conquer differences in background. The boyfriend of the song's narrator is a failed musician who left his native Georgia to move to Los Angeles to become a "superstar, but he didn't get far". He decides to give up, and "go back to the life he once knew." Despite the fact that she's settled and secure in herself, the narrator decides to move to Georgia with him....

Jim Weatherly had recorded one of his own songs, "Midnight Plane to Houston," on Jimmy Bowen's Amos Records. "It was based on a conversation I had with somebody...about taking a midnight plane to Houston," Weatherly recalls. "I wrote it as a kind of a country song. Then we sent the song to a guy named Sonny Limbo in Atlanta and he wanted to cut it on Cissy Houston... he asked if I minded if he changed the title to 'Midnight Train to Georgia.' And I said, I don't mind. Just don't change the rest of the song.'" Weatherly in an interview with Gary James, stated that the phone conversation was with Farrah Fawcett and he used Fawcett and his friend Lee Majors, who she'd just started dating, "as kind of like characters."...

In her autobiography, Between Each Line of Pain and Glory, Gladys Knight wrote that she hoped the song was a comfort to the many thousands who come each year from elsewhere to Los Angeles to realize the dream of being in motion pictures or music, but then fail to realize that dream and plunge into despair. (Source)

How this song moves me:

This is not my favorite song by Gladys Knight & the Pips, but it's definitely the one that has moved me the most. It is a song about love, and a song about comfort - and for those of us who have experienced the sort of heartbreaking pain of failure alluded to in the song, it definitely elicits a very visceral reaction.

This is a song for the darkest of dark moments - when you give up on your dreams completely, and have to face the reality of that. Retreating home, to a "life once known," but perhaps left behind for good reason. Losing a dream can be bitterly soul-crushing, and the lucky few have someone in their lives like Gladys sings about here, someone who's willing to retreat into those dark recesses with them, to understand and comfort and love unconditionally. That's something we all want, and for four minutes, we can cling to the comfort offered by the narrator of this song.

Gladys's voice is so rich and full and beautiful that you kinda can't help but fall for her a little bit. She sings with such confidence, that this is the right decision to make, following the man she loves back into his past, to a place he tried to escape. The fact that he sold all of his possessions and bought a one-way ticket on the midnight train speaks volumes - for his poverty, for his shame. And yet, there is such a peaceful quality in her voice as well, reminiscent of the romantic ideal of only needing the person you love to be happy/content in life. It's just breathtaking, especially in live performances ♥