Hey, it’s Music Friday when we bring you fabulous songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the lyrics or title. Today, a cowboy learns a valuable life lesson in Kenny Rogers’ 1991 hit, “If You Want to Find Love.”
Co-written by Rogers, Skip Ewing and Max D. Barnes, the song uses multiple jewelry and precious metal references to tell the story of two strangers who meet in a bar. The man has a cheating heart, but the woman sets him straight.
She reacts to the cowboy’s advances with the following advice: “If you wanna find gold / Go looking in the mountains / If you wanna find silver / Go digging in stones / If you wanna find heaven / Go reading in the Bible / If you wanna find love / Go looking at home.”
Later in the song, the woman focuses on the cowboy’s wedding band. Rogers sings, “She touched the gold ring on his finger / And held it to the jukebox light / And she said, ‘Stranger, think what you’re losing / If you leave here with me tonight.”
“If You Want to Find Love” was released as the first single from Back Home Again, the county music superstar’s 24th studio album. The single reached #11 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart.
Born in Houston in 1938, Kenneth Ray “Kenny” Rogers is one of the most successful country artists of all time. He has charted more than 120 singles and topped the country and pop album charts for more than 200 individual weeks. In all, he has sold more than 120 million records worldwide and, amazingly, charted a record within each of the last seven decades.
The soon-to-be 78-year-old (his birthday is August 21) announced in 2015 that he would be retiring from show business after a final tour, which he is calling “The Gambler’s Last Deal.” Shows will run through April of 2017.
Please check out the video of Rogers’ live performance of “If You Want To Find Love.” The lyrics are below if you’d like to sing along…
“If You Want To Find Love”
Written by Skip Ewing, Max D. Barnes and Kenny Rogers. Performed by Kenny Rogers.
He was sitting on a bar stool
A picture from a cheating song
She’d been standing by the jukebox
Dropping quarters all night long.
He said, tell me: are you lonely?
Is there some place we can go?
She said: cowboy, you know I’m lonely
But there’s something you should know:
If you wanna find gold
Go looking in the mountains
If you wanna find silver
Go digging in stones
If you wanna find heaven
Go reading in the Bible
If you wanna find love
Go looking at home.
She touched the gold ring on his finger
And held it to the jukebox light
And she said. Stranger, think what you’re losing
If you leave here with me tonight.
So he pulled her body closer
She felt feelings she’d never known
And he said: thank you, for the lesson
And if you need me I’ll be at home.
If you wanna find gold
Go looking in the mountains
If you wanna find silver
Go digging in stones
If you wanna find heaven
Go reading in the Bible
If you wanna find love
Go looking at home.
If you wanna find gold
Go looking in the mountains
If you wanna find silver
Go digging in stones
If you wanna find heaven
Go reading in the Bible
If you wanna find love
Go looking at home.
If you wanna find love
Go looking at home.
Credit: Kenny Rogers by Eva Rinaldi [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
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