The Wild Reed: When Wendy Walked Away

Friday, August 13, 2021

When Wendy Walked Away

This evening for “music night” at The Wild Reed I share another song by Canadian-born Australian singer-songwriter Wendy Matthews. You may recall that last month I shared the recently-released Sam Hawksley song “We All Need Love,” which features Wendy on lead vocals.

Tonight’s offering is the official music video for “Then I Walked Away,” a track from Wendy’s fourth solo studio album, 1997’s Ghosts.

Produced by Glenn Skinner and Wendy herself, Ghosts debuted and peaked at number 43 in Australia and was nominated for Best Adult Contemporary Album at the 1998 ARIA Music Awards. It lost out to Looking for Butter Boy by Archie Roach.

Written by Gary Clark and Eric Pressley, “Then I Walked Away” was released in May 1997 as the lead single from Ghosts, peaking at number 75 on the Australian charts.

The music video was filmed in Sydney and depicts Wendy as both a pet groomer and pet photographer, which shouldn’t come as a surprise given her great love of animals. Indeed, over the years Wendy has done a lot of advocating for animal rights, including campaigning against “puppy mills” and similar cruel and exploitative practices.

In terms of the song’s message, “Then I Walked Away” is all about the good things that can be gained when we walk away from a relatinship that, for whatever reason, has become dysfunctional and inauthentic. In fact, the song could serve as the musical companion piece to Bianca Sparacino’s beautiful and powerful article, “You Cannot Love Someone Into Their Potential,” an excerpt from which can be found here at The Wild Reed.

Heavy stuff, I know. . . . Yet the song’s video also has a delightfully fun side, as you’ll see!

Nobody feels like I do
I’ve been walking, walking in the shadows of you
I tried pushing, I tried shoving
I tried hating you, I even tried loving you

And then I walked away and it felt so good
When I walked away
Then I walked away and it felt so good
Like you never thought I would

Nobody feels like I do
I’ve been faking too long for you
I tried shouting, I tried screaming
I tried praying but I was dreaming

And then I walked away and it felt so good
When I walked away
Then I walked away and it felt so good
Like you never thought I would.

Here’s Trevor Mobbs’ 2014 Amazon review of Ghosts:

As a long-time admirer of Wendy Matthews, my personal feeling is that this is her best work, even though it was not her most commercially successful album here in Australia.

I think a major reason for the quality of this album is that it is more integrated than usual. Matthews has primarily spent her career interpreting other people’s songs, with some co-writing, but here the majority of the album is written by herself and Glenn Skinner. The result is more stylistically, thematically and emotionally coherent. There are no weak spots, with all thirteen songs contributing to the satisfying effect of the whole.

I enjoy all of the Wendy Matthews’ albums, but this is the one I most often reach for. After many years of listening I’ve yet to grow tired of it.