Whole Wide World

Songsmith Wreckless Eric And That Special Someone

It’s summer up here in the Northern Hemisphere and time to fall in love again. How about making that definitive this time? Not as easy as it sounds. We all know that ordinary individuals can form lasting loving relationships with total strangers met by chance in unplanned or unforeseen situations, but do we make this happen or does it happen on its own? That is the question.

I can’t remember where I read : When we meet someone unexpectedly, we are often caught off guard and more open to forming a genuine connection. This sense of spontaneity and unpredictability can lead to friendships that are built on a foundation of authenticity and trust. Oh yes, I remember. It came from GoodEngine, an AI-powered blog. The same AI source also said : There is something magical about the way that fate can bring two people together. Hmm. Does that help?

A Matchmaker will be less likely to talk about fate and more likely to say that our qualities and quirks are more legible to potential partners than we think. Some of these get picked up on first encounters, others take a little longer. Awareness of who we are, and what we’re looking for, can trigger that encounter of a lifetime. Hmm. So you have to work at it to make it work?

Questions like these are at the heart of (I’d Go The) Whole Wide World, the song which the subject of the fifth post in the Songsmiths series telling the story of how a young man responds to a mother’s answer to her son’s despair at ever finding that special someone.

Have a listen for yourself.

Musical ingredients

I occasionally ask myself why Whole Wide World is a song which still comes up on my inner juke box, even though I haven’t heard it playing anywhere for the longest time. There are 3 Ws in the title. And it wasn’t until I unsleeved a freshly-bought copy of the album A Bunch of Stiffs, which featured the song as Track 2 on Side 1, that I noticed there was also a W in the artist’s name. I had previously heard it played on the John Peel Show and thought Eric was Reckless, but it turned out I was rong1. There was a W. And he was, and still is, Wreckless Eric aka Eric Goulding.

Okay, so that’s a lot of Ws. But what makes Whole Wide World special? Could it be the musical ingredients in the mix?

The guitar sounds as if Eric has just learnt to play it. There only seem to be two chords in the song. In 1977, when it was released, it was not unusual to find young musicians in a recording studio very shortly after learning to play the instrument of their calling. Two-chord songs were perfectly acceptable. And if they were the only two chords the performer knew, so much the better.

On more careful listening, this simple structure reveals some neat textural touches. Take the way the bass comes in after the first chorus and remains prominent from then on. It is played by the artful Nick Lowe, who also produced the song. He was Stiff Records house producer at the time, most famously working with The Damned and Elvis Costello, as well as recording and releasing songs of his own. Lowe also invited Steve Goulding along to play drums on the song – his session playing would stand out again on Costello‘s Watching the Detectives released a few months later.

Then there’s Wreckless Eric‘s voice, which gives the song its special soul – not quite punk, but certainly young and defiant. Except that it wasn’t quite Eric‘s voice. In a 2023 interview, the singer explains that somebody tampered with the recording and this changed the key of the voice : “Someone sped it up in the cut, so it sounds like Mickey Mouse. Everything in the key of E ended up in F.” It may be the way we’ve always heard it, but Eric can still tell the difference : “They’re using Whole Wide World in some German film next year. I tried to get them to use it at the correct speed, but they had a listen and said, No, no, it completely loses the vibe.”

It wasn’t the first time that an original recording had been given a gentle acceleration, creating what was possibly a key element in its success. If you want Eric to give you a true burst of His Master’s Voice, check out the video of a live version of Whole Wide World by Wreckless Eric and his band from 1979.

Trademark of quality is the writing

So yes, this is a catchy song with some simple guitar, a great bassline, some cool drumming, and a quirky voice. But the real secret of its power lies in the lyrics which are light years from the musical mood of the times.

In 1977, UK Punk Rock lyrics were typically urban and rough, producing songs that were more likely to shake you up and shout in your face than those like Whole Wide World, classified under New Wave, which could also leave you wistful. The song starts out as a mother-son conversation about meeting the girl of your dreams which sounds so English until Tahiti – an archipeligo of 118 islands 15,000 kms away from the little island of Great Britain – pops up from the middle of the Pacific.

Is the chorus what the young boy really said in response to his mum’s pitch on the scarcity of perfect partners? It’s a great chorus, but what matters is that opening verse and the fact that his special someone probably lives in Tahiti.

There are more islands in Verse 2. Maybe he won’t need to go all the way to Tahiti. His perfect partner could be a nearer neighbour in the Bahamas, a group of 700 coral islands at a mere hop of 10,000 kms away in the Caribbean.

Or maybe the change of location is just Mum’s way of creating a more hopeful scenario into which she weaves the possibility that maybe there is a tropical maid dreaming of him, just as he’s yearning for her. All they have to do is meet. Maybe Mum is really a hybrid 1977 version of Matchmaker and GoodEngine?

VERSES 1 & 2

When I was a young boy / My mother said to me / There’s only one girl in the world for you / And she probably lives in Tahiti

I’d go the whole wide world / I’d go the whole wide world / just to find her

Maybe she’s in the Bahamas / Where the Carribean Sea is blue / Dreaming in a tropical moonlit night / Because nobody’s talked about you

I’d go the whole wide world / I’d go the whole wide world / just to find her

I’d go the whole wide world / I’d go the whole wide world / to find out where they hide her

I’d go the whole wide world / I’d go the whole wide world / just to find her

In 1964, The Marvelettes sang of the plenitude of potential partners in Too many fish in the sea, where a mother tells her daughter not to waste her love on a man who doesn’t love her in return because there’s plenty more where he came from. Wreckless Eric and his mum change our perspective completely. We’re out of the water and on dry land : even if you have found the right island in the archipeligo of your choice, you still have to find the right girl and she has to be yearning for you for it to work.

VERSE 3

Why am I hanging around in the rain out here / Trying to pick up a girl ? / Why are my eyes filling up with these lonely tears / When there’s girls all over the world ?

When the chorus hits three times after Verse 2, it could be seen as some sort of triumphant resistance, but that bass guitar is never far away keeping any optimisim in check.

Things get grim as Verse 3 opens and the narrator wonders about the point of it all. He breaks away from the conversation with his mother and looks for his own answers.

Tropical islands and their promise of true love seem as improbable as being able to break out of this loneliness he detests so that he can finally move into a meaningful relationship. Questions come drizzling down. The growl and grunt of hanging around in the rain seem to express the singer’s frustration – the frustration of feeling you there’s no point in even trying any more. He wants to believe there’s girls all over the world, but has to fight back the liquid langour of his eyes filling up with these lonely tears.

He’s having a hard time holding on to that other-worldly dream encounter, but he finishes the song by giving it another whirl just the same. After all, he wonders, maybe his true love really does lie pining away in a heatwave as she scans the horizon hoping that I won’t be long. This promise is irresistible, and he decides that’s where he should be : lying on that sun-soaked beach with her, not stuck in rainy England.

It’s in the elliptical final verse that Wreckless Eric the troubadour really gets to work. It seems the couple were looking for each other, and the storyline has them finding each other and opting for the Tropics rather than the UK. Was there a discussion about which family member should be relocating for this relationship to work? Hey! Who’s writing this song?

We float magically into a close-up of the girl who seemed so far away as the song began. In four magic lines we get a vision of friendship, courtship, conception, childbirth and the contemplation of a new branch to the shared family tree.

VERSES 4 & 5

Is she lying on a tropical beach somewhere / Underneath a tropical sun ? / Pining away in a heatwave there / Hoping that I won’t be long ?

I should be lying on that sun-soaked beach with her/ Caressing her warm, brown skin / And then in a year or maybe not quite / We’ll be sharing the same next of kin

I’d go the whole wide world / I’d go the whole wide world / just to find her (Repeat …)

This scene would be gentle justice after all the suffering, if only it could be true. The song fades out as the chorus renews his comittment to go the whole wide world just to find her. One day perhaps.

Beware of the W

Beware of the W, gentle reader. There’s one sitting in the middle of beWare whose very wuh sounds a warning. There’s a W hiding at the end of groW which you don’t see till you get to the end. And any insurance company will tell you there is a whole wide world of difference between a reckless driver and a Wreckless one, even if both sound the same when spoken.

Whole Wide World is now a classic without ever having been a chart hit. It has been covered numerous times as a very informative Fandom page explains. Wreckless Eric has released 19 albums in a long and creative career as a singer-songwriter, plus an autobiography called A Dysfunctional Success recently updated and republished. He also has a charming blog on line which will have any wordweaver in stitches or in tears as Eric stumbles through life wide-eyed and occasionally legless.

Photo – Kazuo Ota – Unsplash

In spite of all these other things he has done, and the various countries2 he has lived in over the years, Eric still patiently answers questions about his most famous song of all. Here’s a sample from an interview on the Alabama Local News Website in 2014 : I actually do remember the day I wrote it. I had a girlfriend and I was trying to get on without this girlfriend so I went to an area of town which I would never actually go to and I thought, “What the hell am I doing here?” I’m walking around trying to avoid someone because she’s not the one I want to be with but where do you find the girl you want to be with?

Yes, gentle reader, the trickiest Ws of all are those which embrace the O in the WoW which is uttered unWittingly when you suddenly find yourself in the presence of that special someone. Something clicks. If you’re lucky, he, she or they will share that Wow. Then again, it may take a While and a little Wooing.

Until that happens, and there are no guarantees it Will, the search will test your patience and your creativity. If you’re still looking, remember the World is Wide. If you’ve already found yours, even if it’s been 50 years, then make sure you let them knoW. Have a great summer.

  1. Rong can be right. Just check out this poet for proof. ↩︎
  2. England, France and the USA. ↩︎

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1 Comment

  1. Tech Learner

    Tech Learner I really like reading through a post that can make men and women think. Also, thank you for allowing me to comment!

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