TheUglylucy4's video: Change Partners

"Change Partners" was written by Stephen Stills and is the opening track off of his second solo LP...Stephen Stills 2. The 1971 release featured artists performing such as Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Nils Lofgren and Jerry Garcia. It is Garcia's Pedal Steel Guitar that you hear on "Change Partners". The ballad peaked at No. 42 on the Billboard 100. "Change Partners" is not an easy song to interpret. It most likely offers us the transition of the relationships of men and women from an early age...to that later in life. The song opens with..."All of the ladies attending the ball, Are requested to gaze in the faces, Found on the dance cards". A dance card is a card bearing the names of a woman's prospective partner at a formal dance. This most likely is the innocent age of the ballad. The next lines are an offering of advice..."Please then remember, And don't get to close, To one special one, He will take your defenses and run". It is in here we seem to come to understand the hidden message. The message that one should not get to close to their "partner" because there is a chance that they are going to leave you. "Change Partners" promotes into its middle age portion relaying to us..."This is how most of our ladies grew up, At the country club dances, They learned how to handle the boys, Gently but firmly, They learned to say no, There were four more young men, Who were waiting in the color and the noise". So we have gone from a dance to the country club but the same message rings home. As the ballad ages, we now find ourselves at a ball..."All of the ladies attending the ball, Are requested to gaze in the faces, Found on the dance cards, Please then remember, And follow your list, Cause the dear things get hurt, And the broken hearts make you feel hard". When you understand that last line, you will now understand how the song came to its name. When dear things get hurt and broken hearts make you feel hard, it is then when we decide to move on from our relationship..."So we change partners, Time to change partners, You must change partners, Again". Is "Change Partners" a song about jaded love? Perhaps. But I think what Stills is trying to suggest here is that, at no matter what age, relationships fail...and we move on. From that dance early on where we simply find another dance partner...to in our later more mature interpretation of failed marriages...we (as a society) are constantly changing partners. Even though the result impacts us more the later in life when it happens, it by no means isn't anything we have not been well versed in. From an early age on, we learn just how fragile relationships can be. Fantastic stuff.