"Stark and chilly, with harmonica cutting through acoustic guitar like a nasty winter wind, 'The River' is about two people scraping through the blue-collar lives they were predestined to live," according to Billboard. The story grows more and more grim as a series of responsibilities start to pile up on two teenage lovers who once had nothing else to focus on beside the cosmic passion they shared for one another. Little by little, they are plunged into a rapture of mounting obligation and the cumbersome stressors of unexpected parenthood, all the while drifting further and further away from the brevity of true love without stipulation. "Then I got Mary pregnant, and man that was all she wrote, and for my nineteenth birthday, I got a union card and a wedding coat," the lyrics read (per AZ Lyrics). 

Still, the narrator always circles back to the timeless memory that he and his lover experienced together over and over again in their youth — diving into a river late night and making love beneath the nocturnal beam of the moon. Once upon a time, they could drive to a sequestered place where nothing in life's periphery could hinder their fiery passion. While that time may be dead and gone, the memory endures all the same: "Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir, at night on them banks I'd lie awake, and pull her close just to feel each breath she'd take."

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qL7Up56eZpOkunCFlWptcmlfqbWmedGemKVlo6m8s8WMm5yhoZ6ZeqO%2B1JycZqugp7avs9KtnJ6mo2LAsLrGZquhnV2ntrex0Wg%3D