One Step Ahead
Neil Finn
One step ahead of you
Stay in motion, keep an open mind
Love is a race won by two
Your emotion, my solitude
If I stop I could lose my head
So I’m losing you instead
Either way I’m confused
You slow me down, what can I do?
There’s one particular way I have to choose
One step ahead of you
Always someone makes it hard to move
She says, Boy I want you to stay
But I save it all for another day
If I stop I could lose my head
But I’m ready for romance
Either way I’m confused
I don’t know what I’m s’posed to do
I can only stay
One step ahead of you
Stop, I confess sometimes
I don’t know where I’m going
Part of me stays with you,
I’m slowing down, what can I do
It’s hard to stay one step ahead of you
One step ahead of you
Time is running out
Catching up with you
One step ahead of you
When I hold you close
Can I really lose?
One step ahead
Only one step ahead
She’s one step ahead of you
Song appears on:
Split Enz - Corroboree (aka Waiata) - album, 1981
Live: Fangradio 16 April 2020
“Noel Crombie actually wrote a set of lyrics because I was having trouble, he wrote really funny stuff. Noel used to write in a very phonetic way. I did use one of his lines: ‘One step ahead of you, makes it hard to move’ or something like that. It was magic in the studio when we got that one. Eddie [Rayner] had some wonderful keyboard parts. I wrote that in a hotel room in Melbourne and I’ve still got the tape.”
“The title, One Step Ahead, implied - certainly for Neil personally - the determination he’s got to keep moving ahead and resist the pressure to come up with another I Got You.”
“One Step Ahead Is quite a subtle song in lots of ways. I was a bit embarrassed to play it to the band when I first brought it to rehearsal because I couldn’t really hear it myself. I’m very lucky to be in a great band that can make the songs better than what I can even imagine, so I was very pleased in the studio that that one turned out so well. It’s a very simple song, though. It’s got no obvious chorus.”
