Black's greatest hit, from 1987. Simply beautiful.

Here I go out to sea again
The sunshine fills my hair
And dreams hang in the air

Gulls in the sky and in my blue eye
You know it feels unfair
There's magic everywhere

Look at me standing
Here on my own again
Up straight in the sunshine

No need to run and hide
It's a wonderful, wonderful life
No need to laugh and cry
It's a wonderful, wonderful life

Sun’s in your eyes
The heat is in your hair
They seem to hate you
Because you're there

And I need a friend
Oh, I need a friend
To make me happy
Not stand here on my own

Look at me standing
Here on my own again
Up straight in the sunshine

No need to run and hide
It's a wonderful, wonderful life
No need to laugh and cry
It's a wonderful, wonderful life

I need a friend
Oh, I need friend
To make me happy
Not so alone
Look at me here
Here on my own again
Up straight in the sunshine

No need to run and hide
It's a wonderful, wonderful life
No need to laugh and cry
It's a wonderful, wonderful life

No need to run and hide
It's a wonderful, wonderful life
No need to run and hide
It's a wonderful, wonderful life

A wonderful life
It’s a wonderful life

HERE I GO= (coll.) Here I am; I'm ready. (coll.) Look, I'm going to... (some place).

OUT TO SEA= If you go "out to sea", you embark on a journey by boat (a voyage).

SUNSHINE= The light from the sun.

GULLS= (also SEAGULLS) White sea birds (see picture)

UNFAIR= /unfeə/ Unjust, without justice.

UP STRAIGHT= Just an emphatic form for UP, when we are talking about the standing position. The sentence here would be: "Look at me, (I'm) standing here... up straight", so "stand up straight" is an emphatic form for "stand up".

ON MY OWN= Alone.

NO NEED TO= (there's) no need to = It's not necessary to...

SUN'S IN YOUR EYES= He's talking in first person all the time (using "I") but in this paragraph he uses the second person ("you"). Considering the general meaning of the song (see under the Meaning tab) this "you" is probably an impersonal "you", so he is making general statements, like when we say "if you go to the moon you need a space suit". So here, when he says "you" (=everybody) he is really thinking about himself, as the best example of that situation (the sun and the heat hate me for no reason, the whole universe is against me!).

Colin Vearncombe (stage name: Black) wrote this song after breaking up with his first wife. Six years after releasing this hit he said: "It's another one of life's rich ironies that because my first marriage messed up in a very big way, I ended up writing a couple of songs that were the most successful I've ever written. My ex-wife is indirectly responsible for me having a hit, it makes me smile".

So this song is about how he feels after his rupture: Alone, sad. And this is an interpretation of the lyrics that I came across on the Internet. I think this quite sums it up quite well:

I think this is about feeling so alone and desperately unhappy, that you literally feel you are '"alone out to sea'" with nobody steering your boat. You're out in the sunshine, on a beautiful day, and you feel that even the 'sun and heat hate you".

You feel your dreams 'hang in the air' because you don't know if you'll ever see them come to fruition. Your 'blue = sad eye'. sees magic that isn't felt. I think that even though this is a desperately sad song, the writer of it, seems to write/sing that it's a wonderful life over and over as almost a mantra, as if to remind himself, or even to comment on the irony of his mood. I also wonder whether the writer is also referring to an old movie, by the same name, about a man who didn't realise what he had. This is such a beautiful song. It's very clever. Sad lyrics teamed with tropical beach carefree sounding music. Another hint of intentional irony perhaps, that all may not be what it outwardly seems. (signed as 'thelydstar')