Released 7 August 1970 Length 2:57 Writer(s) Ray Thomas | Recorded 22 January 1970 Label Threshold Records Producer(s) Tony Clarke | |
"And the Tide Rushes In" is a song from The Moody Blues 1970 album A Question of Balance. Written by band member Ray Thomas, "And the Tide Rushes In" connotes a sense of strife in a relationship with the narrator's lover symbolized as the tide, rushing in and washing the narrator's efforts away. The first verse conveys the discord: "I build them up/You knock them down." In the second verse, the narrator listens to his lover, yet acknowledges the complaints are the same ones always being offered: "I hear nothing new." The song's conclusion does not suggest a happy ending. The blackbird mentioned will continue to watch the events of the lovers' lives, but there's nothing to suggest the lovers will do anything different in their lives than what they've done up to this point. Acorns will grow into trees, but that's the only change the ending suggests.
Ray Thomas reportedly wrote the song after a row with his wife.