I Dreamed A Dream

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Robert Ringer

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There was a time when men were kind,
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting.

There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song …
And the song was exciting.
There was a time,
Then it all went wrong.

I dreamed a dream in time gone by,
When hope was high
And life worth living.
I dreamed that love would never die,
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.

Then I was young and unafraid,
And dreams were made and used and wasted.
There was no ransom to be paid,
No song unsung, no wine untasted.

But the tigers come at night,
With their voices soft as thunder,
As they tear your hope apart,
And they turn your dream to shame.

He slept a summer by my side,
He filled my days with endless wonder.
He took my childhood in his stride,
But he was gone when autumn came.

And still I dream he’ll come to me,
That we will live the years together.
But there are dreams that cannot be,
And there are storms we cannot weather.

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living.
So different now from what it seemed,
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

Lyrics by Jean Marc Natel, Herbert Kretzmer, Claude Michel Schonberg, Alain Albert Boublil

Copyright Robert Mellin Inc., Progressive Music, Aldo Music Co., Productions Bagad, Alain Boublil Music Ltd., Fern Music, Boublil Alain Editions Musicales S.a.r.l.

 

My Take:

Last week I featured Josh Groban’s version of “You’re Still You,” and mentioned that when he sang that song on the sitcom Ally McBeal, it was probably one of the two most surprising and spectacular musical debuts in television history.  The other, to which I am obliged to accord number-one status, is Susan Boyle’s performance of “I Dreamed A Dream” on Britain’s Got Talent in 2009.

What made her debut so exciting was that the judges smirked and snickered at her before she lit up their eyes with her remarkable voice.  Now, Susan Boyle is a legend and inspiration to millions of people — the female Horatio Alger of the entertainment world.

As to the song itself, “I Dreamed A Dream” has been a classic since it was first sung in Les Misérables in London in 1985, which subsequently became the longest-running musical in Broadway history (though The Phantom of the Opera also lays claim to that record).

The words to the song are those of a heartbroken woman who has been used by a man who left her high and dry.  She nostalgically thinks about a time “when hope was high and life worth living,” a time when she naively believed that “love would never die.”

I find the most interesting and cleverly worded lyrics to be found in the stanza:

But the tigers come at night,
With their voices soft as thunder
,
As they tear your hope apart,
And they turn your dream to shame.

The tigers, of course, are metaphorical and can represent just about anything the listener wants them to be.  For me, the tigers represent all the bad things that happen in life — the bad people, the bad luck, the bad experiences that tear your hope apart … and, indeed, they usually are about as soft as thunder.  Very clever play on words.

Much like the lyrics to “If You Go Away,” the woman still dreams that her lover will come back to her and that they “will live the years together.”  But, at the same time, she knows it really isn’t going to happen, that “there are dreams that cannot be, and there are storms we cannot weather.”

With the last words of the song being “now life has killed the dream I dreamed,” it leaves no doubt in the listener’s mind as to how things ended for this mythical, heartbroken woman.

As a side note, though it’s a much heavier song, the lyrics to “I Dreamed A Dream” remind me a bit of Neil Diamond’s “Desiree,” but in reverse.  In “Desiree,” poor Neil was taken advantage of by a woman older than him, but, unlike “I Dreamed A Dream,” it was a one-night stand.  It must have been quite a night, though, because, according to his lyrics, he “became a man at the hands of a girl almost twice [his] age.”

But I digress.  No matter how many times you’ve watched this video, if you’re anything like me, I’m sure you’ll once again enjoy Susan Boyle’s singing the shortened version of “I Dreamed A Dream” in her historic appearance on Britain’s Got Talent.

Robert Ringer

Robert Ringer is an American icon whose unique insights into life have helped millions of readers worldwide. He is also the author of two New York Times #1 bestselling books, both of which have been listed by The New York Times among the 15 best-selling motivational books of all time.