“Islands In The Stream” — Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton

No Words, No Song
5 min readMar 21, 2020
Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

We are all just islands in the stream…especially at the moment.

As turmoil swirls around us, we get to decide whether we hold fast and stand up for the human values of decency, kindness and compassion. Or lose our grip on what makes us human and allow ourselves to be swept along by the raging torrent carrying of all the world’s troubles before it.

Written by the Bee Gees, “Islands In The Stream” is a touching love song…a song about what it means to be with that special person you’ve waited for your whole life…

You do something to me that I can’t explain
Hold me closer and I feel no pain
Every beat of my heart
We got something going on

We all need that this week. As the world pulls down its shutters in a way that anyone who didn’t live through the carnage of WW2 couldn’t begin to understand, having someone to hold you close makes all the difference to your well-being when the going gets tough.

“Islands In The Stream” is a great metaphor too, although the Bee Gees didn’t come up with it. “Islands In The Stream” was borrowed from the title of an Ernest Hemingway novel, and boy, did Ernest Hemingway know how to write.

I know it’s an entirely different genre, but the Bee Gees were no slouches when it came to writing themselves.

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No Words, No Song
No Words, No Song

Written by No Words, No Song

Without words, it’s just a nice tune. Add words — now you’ve got a song. And songs can change your world. I write about some that changed mine.