Music + lyrics by Peter King
2:46 | :30 soundbite
During a two-year span when I found myself unemployed and decided to view my circumstances as an opportunity to get a graduate degree in music at Duquesne University, I spent my idle time at a coffeehouse in Shadyside, a Pittsburgh neighborhood.
Art and life can get tangled up in strange ways. I wrote this song as an ode to the bright, beautiful and well-traveled women I sometimes saw in the place. Years later, I happened to stop into that coffeehouse again, and I met a bright, beautiful woman who had lived in Ireland, England, South Africa and the United States. She’s looking over my shoulder as I write this.
Women who have lived overseas
I see them in the coffeehouse
They wait in line with style
They talk of teaching in Rome
Or of summer on a Grecian isle
Women who have lived overseas
They open up their sketchbooks
They read the Village Voice
They run their hands through their hair
And I stare, I stare
I have no choice
Bridge:
Cause they spark my imagination
They inspire me to song
Once I even knew a few
But it’s been too long
Women who have lived overseas
They linger with their lattes
Or gulp them down and run
They find a place in the shade
Or they strech like swans out in the sun
Bridge:
And oh, this scene is timeless
It’s like a painting in the Louvre
A thousand years from this moment
Men will still be moved by
Women who have lived overseas
Women who have lived overseas
Women who have lived overseas