Color of the Blues

The speaker is heartbroken after someone leaves and does not return. At first, he notices blue in the sky, a letter, and the world around him; as the song continues, these details become reminders of the absent person. His sadness seems to spread everywhere, until even the songs he sings carry it.

Blue works both as a color and as a common image of sadness. The bluebird, which might usually suggest happiness, no longer sings as before, reflecting the speaker’s changed mood. The “blue note” in every song suggests that grief has entered his music, while the cold sea echoes how distant and emotionally cold the departing person seems to him.

The lyrics turn ordinary sights into reflections of loss, but they may be playful as well as sorrowful: the repeated claim that blue is “the color of the blues” has a simple, almost circular logic. The speaker may be exaggerating when he sees blue everywhere, yet that exaggeration conveys how completely the breakup shapes his experience. The song does not explain why the person left or whether they might return; it focuses on the emptiness the speaker feels now.