”Everything I Own” by Bread

Credit: wikipedia.org

Music has the uncanny quality of reaching inside of us and yanking out the emotions no human being could ever touch.

As a teenager, I remember sitting in the passenger’s seat of a car with my mother. We had watched my grandmother die from lung cancer only a few days earlier. We sat in stoic silence, listening to the car radio play oldies tunes.

Bread’s opening line from “Everything I Own” blared through the speakers, “You sheltered me from harm, kept me warm, kept me warm. You gave my life to me, set me free, set me free.”

The road in front of me turned into a blurry mess. Tears gushed out of my eyes before I could even register what was happening. I turned to my mother, who was also sobbing in the driver’s seat. Every emotion that I had been feeling up until that point suddenly burst from me. It overwhelmed us both in the same moment, all because of a simple song.

“Everything I Own” is often mistaken for a romantic love song, but this is far from true. Singer David Gates wrote the song in 1972 after the death of his father. A friend told him at the funeral that his father had always been proud of him and his music.

Gates said, “My success would have been so special to him as he was my greatest influence. So I decided to write and record ‘Everything I Own’ about him.”

The melody coos over a light guitar part, erupting into outright yearning in the chorus. Its message echoes the thought many of us have when we experience a loss:

Is there someone you know
You’re loving them so
But taking them all for granted
You may lose them one day
Someone takes them away
And they don’t hear the words you long to say

I would give anything I own
Give up my life, my heart, my home
I would give everything I own
Just to have you back again

Whenever I hear this song, I’m still reminded of my grandmother’s twinkling eyes and that slight wiggle in her shoulders when she laughed. Losing someone who molded you into the person you are today is agonizing. Yet music can remind us of how wonderful it was to have had that person in our lives, even if it meant losing them in the end.

Read the full lyrics for “Everything I Own” here.