About the Song

Track: Keep Me in Your Heart

Length: 3:31

Album: The Wind (2003)

Artist: Warren Zevon

Songwriter: Warren Zevon / Jorge Calderon

Favorite line: 

“These wheels keep turning but they're running out of steam”

Favorite verse: 

“Sometimes when you’re doing simple things around the house

Maybe you’ll think of me and smile

You know I’m tied to you like the buttons on your blouse

Keep me in your heart for a while”

℗ © Indieblu Music

Here’s Why I Love It

What would you do if you were diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and told that you had only three months to live?

I hope nobody reading this ever truly has to answer this question, but that’s exactly the hand Zevon was dealt. In the face of his tragic diagnosis, battling and struggling through physical and mental deterioration, the lifelong troubadour created and released the album The Wind (2003), and then died two weeks later (at the young age of 56).

Keep Me in Your Heart is the final track on that record. It’s a deeply moving yet gentle ballad that deals with love, loss, and death. There’s no other way to put it. It’s a song that just melts you to the core. The idea that Zevon wrote this beautiful song for the loved ones he would soon leave behind makes it so dramatic. Never mind the subtle cleverness of the lyrics like how he adds “for a while” into the song (but not the title). Perhaps suggesting a simpler ask from his loved ones. Or the soothing melody that wanes you into a daydream. Ultimately, you end up with what surmounts to a mini-movie playing just for you.

Maybe I’m an emotional guy—okay, I am an emotional guy—but if you have a beating heart, I find it hard to imagine your not being moved by this one. After I learned the story, I listened to this song and had to wipe a tear from my left eye. And just the idea that Keep Me in Your Heart could have easily died along with Zevon is a testament to the importance of creation and of truly living until your last breath. 

Listen to song and read the lyrics for full effect.

You can now listen to the Lyrics I Love playlist on Spotify. A new song is added with each edition!

*Here’s an article for more context on Zevon, the album, and this song.

**Here’s a good live version by Eddie Vedder honoring Zevon (and David Letterman)

***This article is part of the ongoing Lyrics I Love series: short interpretations of the meaning and story behind one song with lyrics that move me.