The quintessential campfire song that will have you spinning around and dancing with your lover until your lungs get tired and you collapse in a fit of lovesick giggles. Canyon Moon shows us that side of a long-distance relationship that has become so tiresome and difficult, but it also highlights the excitement and joy at the prospect of seeing the one you love again. How you see them in every little thing, reminiscing on golden memories, and knowing you’ve been gone too long. Much like the other love songs that inhabit this album, Canyon Moon showcases complete adoration and a love that has passed the test of time.
This is the track you hear playing when the protagonist has finally decided to “go home” to the person who has always been the one for them, they just hadn’t realized until then. Being away from the one you love is a very difficult thing, and most relationships can’t stand that kind of pressure. This track shows that while it is hard when you find the person that is your home, you hold on for dear life and never let them go. They’ll live in your daydreams and behind your eyes when you close them for the night. You’ll see them in the color of their eyes when you stare at the sky, and you’ll see them in the places you go. And through it all, you will find yourself humming this song as you wait to be in their presence again. A love that can pass this test is one for the ages, one to be admired and applauded for resilience and devotion.
Canyon Moon displays a love that is resilient and beautiful. A love that has become more than just a person, but your home. Your home is no longer the four walls that contain a bedroom, a hallway, and a kitchen, but the person you fell in love with is your home. Just the comfort of knowing you’ll be back in their arms soon is enough to make you jump around a sing until you collapse.
Bri’s take-
Home, it's a concept that goes beyond 4 walls of brick, wood, and mortar to be something more. Its been referenced in countless love songs like in Taylor Swift’s London Boy where she sings, “home is where the heart is, but that’s not where mine lives” referencing the idea of your home being the person who you love. Canyon Moon expresses a resilience that comes with love, especially in a relationship that's maintained over miles and miles of distance. Though there are many other doting love songs on the Fine Line album, this may be one of the sweetest and most obvious as to how in love two people can be and shows what hardships they are willing to go through in order to be with one another even if it’s just for 2 weeks at a time.
In this track, Harry fully expresses how hopeful and anxious he is the get back to his home, his person, who he was apart from for far too long for his taste. This song takes you on the journey with Harry as he deals with fits of unrest only wanting to get home. The lyrics of Canyon Moon are truly the most vivid they could be, they paint a picture that you can clearly see from saying, “door’s yellow, broken blue,” you can see a vintage door that once was blue, but has been painted over yellow and has chipping paint, to the night that was spent under the canyon moon, and the dream of traveling “through Paris, all through Rome.” You can almost hear the “old lover’s hippie music” as you imagine Harry driving in a vintage yellow car through early morning all through the night trying to get back to the one he loves. In this sense, the track is reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac’s You Make Lovin’ Fun with the concept of the time under the canyon moon that Harry continuously references possessed a sort of magic that as Fleetwood Mac said in You Make Lovin’ Fun, “this feeling follows me wherever I go.” It shows how universal this feeling can be, how the feeling of pure unadulterated love for and with someone can take complete control over you and make you unable to do anything, but think of them in all that you do.
Canyon Moon is a song for those who are so in love they don’t know what to do with themselves. For the people who when apart spend hours on the floor staring at the ceiling in anticipation, dancing around their living room in restlessness and longing to dance in the kitchen with the one they love, looking at anything and being reminded of their partner like seeing a radiant sky and only thinking of the color of their eyes.
As the 10th track on the album, Canyon Moon is love at its finest and shows how love can win above all else. Love is stronger than distance and hardship when the two in a relationship are willing to put up all defenses to protect their love and be willing to do whatever in their power to keep their love alive. And it shows how the time together is more memorable than the time apart. This track leaves all who listen in awe and sitting with a pang of jealousy as they wish for a love like the one in the song, but despite the twinge of jealousy the track will have you dancing, swaying, and screaming, “I’m going home,” because to fans of Harry Styles, he is home.
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