(I'll Never Be) Your Maggie May

This type of song is known as a "response" song. In this case, it is response to a song sung by Rod Stewart called "Maggie May." At the time, this Maggie May person, as depicted in that song, would have been called, perhaps, a "Mrs. Robinson," while today she would be called a "MILF" or "cougar."

In that song, the speaker doesn't know what he wants, and is clearly ambivalent about his feelings for her, but in the end decides to leave.

Vega sees this type of relationship from the woman's viewpoint. "I'll never be your Maggie May/ the one you loved and left behind." (How does she know this so certainly? Spoiler Alert: she leaves him).

[One quibble: "That isn't me in bed you'll find" is an unfortunately forced rhyme. That poor phrase is doing some major contortions.]

She compares herself to a geisha in the next verse, interestingly. Although how accurate to the geisha lifestyle she is, I have no idea. I suppose there are many reasons to adopt such a lifestyle, and many ways to enact it.

Then, this small bridge: "And so you go/ No girl could say no/ To you." Wait... wasn't she the one who was going to "go" and leave him? Maybe in his mind, he will do the leaving.

As far as the next line, there is no issue. You might ask, again, "How can it be that no girl can refuse him... didn't she just do that?" Ah, but she is no "girl," is she? Isn't that the point? She's a full-grown woman.

One reason she knows it cannot last is that he has no guile, and so no suspicion. In fact, "we may... change" how we "appear," but she knows he will never "see within," or "ha[ve] that sight."

To make up for the lyrical mis-step above, Vega offers this clever bait and switch. We expect she is going to say that people "change from day to day," but the line is that people change "from day to night," adding a sexual element to such alterations.

Now comes the "spoiler" promised above. She will never be his Maggie May, because "I'll love you first and let you go." It's the old "You can't quit-- you're fired!" gambit.

Why? "Because it must be so." She is wise enough to know that, since it can't last, the quicker she pulls off the Band-Aid, the better.

What about his feelings? "You'll forgive or you will not." Cold, but also realistic. She can't be responsible for his reaction.

"And so a world turns on its end," with the breakup. This sounds like a catastrophe... but doesn't the world spin on its magnetic pole already? This may be taken two ways-- it's the end of the world, or it's business as usual-- because the breakup also can have differing interpretations.

Still, she will miss him, or at least remember him: "I'll see your face in dreams."

The song ends with an admission. She left him-- among other reasons-- because he couldn't keep up with how people change from "day to night." But... she can't either. In these dreams, she says, "nothing's as it seems."

How bad is her intuition? In these dreams, he "still appear[s] some kind of friend."

And so perhaps she dislikes that aspect of his personality because she shares it.

Yeah, that's not going to work...


Next Song: It Makes Me Wonder