Songful Style Link Party #31: “These Dreams” by Heart

About Songful Style

Songful Style is an ageless style challenge series hosted by Shelbee of Shelbee on the Edge, Marsha of Marsha in the Middle, and Suzy of Suzy Turner, The Grey Brunette (formerly The Grey Brunette).

Each month we will share a song with the lyrics and video and we invite you to use whatever aspect of the song that inspires you to create an outfit. 

It is similar to Style Imitating Art where we use artwork to inspire our outfit creations. Except Songful Style gives you lyrics, music, video, and album artwork to inspire your fashion creativity. You may even find inspiration in a memory triggered by the selected song. It is all open to your own personal interpretation and just a fun way to discover new music and get a little bit more creative with your wardrobe.

Anyone is welcome to join us on a permanent basis or you can just play along without any obligation to do anything other than feel inspired. We are flexible and fun and just want to find more ways to play dress up because it’s what we enjoy doing! 

We will be posting on the last Monday of each month and will announce our song choice for the following month at the end of each post. You are welcome to style your own song inspired outfit and add it to the link party or link anything that you want to share even if it has nothing to do with the song. 

Suzy chose this month’s song, “These Dreams” by Heart, for our challenge because she finds the fashion amusing and the song beautiful which makes for a super fun style prompt.

The Lyrics

Spare a little candle
Save some light for me
Figures up ahead
Moving in the trees
White skin in linen
Perfume on my wrist
And the full moon that hangs over
These dreams in the mist

Darkness on the edge
Shadows where I stand
I search for the time
On a watch with no hands
I want to see you clearly
Come closer than this
But all I remember
Are the dreams in the mist

These dreams go on when I close my eyes
Every second of the night I live another life
These dreams that sleep when it's cold outside
Every moment I'm awake the further I'm away

Is it cloak and dagger
Could it be spring or fall?
I walk without a cut
Through a stained glass wall
Weaker in my eyesight
The candle in my grip
And words that have no form
Are falling from my lips

These dreams go on when I close my eyes
Every second of the night I live another life
These dreams that sleep when it's cold outside
Every moment I'm awake the further I'm away

There's something out there
I can't resist
I need to hide away from the pain
There's something out there
I can't resist

The sweetest song is silence
That I've ever heard
Funny how your feet
In dreams never touch the earth
In a wood full of princes
Freedom is a kiss
But the prince hides his face
From dreams in the mist

These dreams go on when I close my eyes
Every second of the night I live another life
These dreams that sleep when it's cold outside
Every moment I'm awake the further I'm away

These dreams go on when I close my eyes
Every second of the night I live another life
These dreams that sleep when it's cold outside
Every moment I'm awake the further I'm away

About the Artist and the Song

Heart is an American-Canadian rock band formed in 1973 in Vancouver, British Columbia, by guitarists Roger Fisher and Steve Fossen. By 1975, Fisher and Fossen were joined by Ann and Nancy Wilson, Michael Derosier, and Howard Leese to form the band’s lineup during their 1970’s success period. These six core band members were included when Heart was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.

Influenced by an eclectic mix of hard rock, heavy metal, and folk music, Heart rose to fame in the late 1970s. By the early 1980s, Fisher, Fossen, and Derosier had left the band and were replaced by Mark Andes and Denny Carmassi. The band’s popularity waned in the early years of this new lineup, but they staged a comeback in the mid 1980s which would last into the early 1990s. Heart disbanded in 1998 but have resumed touring and recording multiple times since then with the Wilson sisters remaining the only consistent members.

Heart has sold over 50 million records worldwide with albums reaching top ten on the Billboard 200 in the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, and the 2010s. They have been ranked number 57 on VH1’s “100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock” and number 49 on Ultimate Classic Rock’s Top 100 Classic Rock Artists. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Heart was nominated for four Grammy Awards. However, they did not take home a statue until 2023 when Ann and Nancy Wilson were presented with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Released on January 18, 1986, “These Dreams” was the third single from the band’s self-titled eighth studio album, Heart, and their first song to top the Billboard Hot 100 on March 22, 1986. The song was written by singer-songwriter Martin Page and long term Elton John collaborator Bernie Taupin and was initially offered to Stevie Nicks who had no interest in recording it. The song was then offered to Heart who had recently signed with Capitol Records and agreed to include “These Dreams” on their upcoming album.

“These Dreams” is a power ballad with a much more polished sound than Heart’s previous work. It is the first single on which Nancy Wilson performed lead vocals instead of her sister Ann. When it came time to record the song, Nancy had a cold which caused her voice to sound gravelly and raspy. After achieving commercial success with “These Dreams”, producers would often ask Nancy if she could get sick again in order to recreate the same raspy, gravelly sound. In the liner notes of their self-titled album, the track was dedicated to a good friend of the Wilsons, Sharon Hess, who died from leukemia a few months before the album’s release. The lyrics describe a fantasy world that the narrator enters every time she sleeps when she is faced with a difficult situation in life.

About My Outfit

My outfit was inspired more by 1980s rocker fashion than by the music or lyrics of the song. Both Nancy and Ann Wilson are wearing similar combinations of skinny pants, boudoir style tops, statement blazers, and sassy heels in the music video. So I started with my faux leather leggings and gold corset with black lace. Next I added a large gold statement necklace with giant crystal earrings. Then I quickly realized that the leggings were giving me a very obvious twedgie, so I added a black lace extender to conceal that weirdness.

Now I had to decide on a blazer and boots that screamed 1980s. At first, I wore this oversized plaid blazer and a pair of tall, very high heeled, brown suede boots with fringe. I liked the outfit well enough and we went out and took lots of photographs of it. As I was about to change into regular clothes for the day (because these clothes are not at all functional for anything except posing for photos), I remembered this old thrifted brocade blazer that I thought might be a better representation of this 80s ballad. My burgundy velvet boots were kind of the icing on the sartorial cake. I will share the other iteration of this outfit with the plaid blazer and brown boots in a future post.

I want to share a funny bit about this corset before I go. I bought it many, many years ago when I was about 40 pounds heavier. It is a size 5X and I am probably now a 1X. After tying the corset as tight as it would go, it was still way too big in the boob area. So for the first time ever in my life, I actually had to stuff my bra with socks to make it fit properly!

Despite the corset being too large, however, I still could barely move with all the boning. How did women of yore wear these things all day every day?! Corsets look cute but the cuteness is not worth the discomfort, that’s for sure!

How did I do with this musical style challenge?

I do hope you will check out how my songful friends have styled their outfits inspired by “These Dreams”. 

• Marsha of Marsha in the Middle
• Suzy of Suzy Turner, The Grey Brunette

Featured Favorite from Songful Style Link Party #30 | “Vienna” by Billy Joel

Emma of Style Splash

Be sure to stop back on October 28, 2024, to see how we find sartorial inspiration from Marsha’s next song choice, “Wildflowers” by Tom Petty.

Keeping it on the edge, 

Shelbee

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