Windmills Of Your Mind

I feel a lot of people are very quick to dismiss song lyrics as something low, only suited to confused dental-braced adolescent girls. For some lyrics this is certainly right, but often enough they are more like poems set to music, and a song can win me over just for its brilliant lyrics.

One song with in my opinion extremely beautiful yet poignant lyrics is Windmills Of Your Mind, the English lyrics written by Alan and Marilyn Bergman.
Originally sung by Noel Harrison for the 1968 film The Thomas Crown Affair, it has been covered by many artists, including Dusty Springfield and Sting.

round, like a circle in a spiral
like a wheel within a wheel
never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
like a snowball down the mountain
or a carnival balloon
like a carousel that's turning, running rings around the moon
like a clock whose hands are sweeping
past the minutes of its face
and the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind
like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own
down a hollow to a cavern
where the sun has never shone
like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream
or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream
like a clock whose hands are sweeping
past the minutes of its face
and the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind
keys that jingle in your pocket
words that jangle in your head
why did summer go so quickly 
was it something that you said?
lovers walk along the shore
and leave their footprints in the sand
is the sound of distant drumming
just the fingers of your hand?
pictures hanging in the hallway and the fragments of a song
half remembered names and faces
but to whom do they belong?
when you knew that it was over you were suddenly aware
that the autumn leaves were turning to the colour of her hair

like a circle in a spiral
like a wheel within a wheel
never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
as the images unwind like the circles that you find
in the windmills of your mind

My favourite version however is by The Colourfield, the third band of ex-Specials frontman Terry Hall. I'm not just saying that because Hall is one of my favourite artists, but because I feel they do the feeling of the song justice. They slowed down the pace and give it a new dimension, turning it from a love song into a sad but apt descripion of mental depression (well, in my ears anyway).