It Must Have Been Love

The speaker is trying to accept that a relationship has ended. The repeated line “it must have been love” suggests that, looking back, they are naming the experience as love even though they have lost it. The song moves between memories of closeness and the loneliness of the present: the speaker longs to be touched and dreams of being together, but knows the relationship is over.

Several images make the loss feel vivid. The quiet bedroom and the “air of silence” suggest that a partner’s absence can make a familiar place feel empty. Winter reflects emotional coldness and hardship, rather than simply describing the weather. In “I turned to water / Like a teardrop in your palm,” the speaker seems fragile and dissolving in the other person’s presence; the image may also suggest that the relationship made them feel emotionally exposed.

The phrase “dream away” implies escaping painful reality through memory or imagination. Meanwhile, “where the water flows” and “where the wind blows” may suggest that love has become something distant and uncontrollable, carried along by life. The speaker sounds certain that the relationship has ended, but less certain about what it meant: “must have been” can express both conviction and an attempt to make sense of a past they can no longer hold onto.