John Martyn / Classics Volume 1 / 1992
Ways to Cry
wounded, defensive, quietly desperate
A confession of infidelity that refuses to apologize in any conventional sense, framed instead as proof of devotion gone sideways. The singer insists every betrayal was really an act of need, and the song's repeating refrain about flying and crying turns daily life into a cycle of small escapes and small griefs.
infidelity and self-justification emotional dependency confusion between feeling and fact fear of abandonment loss of innocence
Who's speaking
A first-person narrator addresses a partner directly, confessing to other women while insisting the betrayals were acts of love or desperation rather than rejection; the voice is unreliable in the sense that it keeps reframing guilt as devotion.
What happens
The song doesn't move through a plotted sequence so much as circle one admission from different angles: each verse restates the same confession of infidelity with a different emotional justification — need, screaming, dreaming, trying, crying. Between these confessions sit verses of disorientation, where the narrator admits he can't distinguish right from wrong or truth from fiction. The song ends not with resolution but with a fragmented, almost mournful acknowledgment that some earlier, simpler version of himself is gone.
How it's built
Built on a tight verse-refrain loop rather than a traditional verse/chorus/bridge arc. The confessional verses alternate with a disorientation verse, and the same two-line refrain about flying and crying closes most stanzas, though the order of 'fly' and 'cry' flips between repetitions, subtly destabilizing which feeling comes first. The piece ends by breaking its own pattern, trailing into a repeated, unfinished phrase about a boy who is no longer there, functioning like a coda that drops the argumentative stance entirely.
Section by section
Opening verse
“I was bleeding for you”
The first confession sets the song's rhetorical move: admitting to another woman while immediately recasting the act as suffering done on behalf of the partner, not against them.
Second verse
The narrator shifts from confession to confusion, blurring the line between lived experience and fiction. This widens the song's scope beyond infidelity into a broader statement about instability of judgment and perception.
Refrain
The paired images of flying and crying compress freedom and pain into the same daily rhythm, implying that escape and heartbreak are not opposites here but the same habitual gesture repeated every day.
Third verse
“I won't beg, but I will have to try”
Pride and fear collide; he resists groveling even as he admits he would act to prevent the relationship's end, exposing the gap between his self-image and his actual desperation.
Closing fragment
“No little boy left”
The song abandons argument altogether here, trailing into an incomplete, elegiac phrase that reads as mourning for an earlier innocence or simpler self, now unrecoverable.
Craft
- anaphora
- The repeated conditional opening to several verses performs the song's logic of repeated, compulsive betrayal, turning confession into incantation rather than explanation.
- paradox
- Framing betrayal as proof of need or longing creates a contradiction the narrator never resolves, which is the emotional engine of the song — he wants credit for fidelity of feeling while admitting infidelity of action.
- chiastic refrain
- The flying/crying couplet reverses its own word order across repetitions, suggesting the two states are not sequential but tangled together, each day holding both at once.
- fragmentation
- The final lines break from full sentences into a stammering, incomplete phrase, formally enacting the loss of coherence or innocence the lyric gestures toward.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading is that the song is less about justifying infidelity than about a narrator trapped in compulsive patterns he can name but not stop — betrayal, need, and grief functioning as a single loop. An alternative reading takes the confessions more literally as manipulative self-excuse, with the closing fragment working as a final admission that whatever youthful sincerity he once had has been used up by this cycle. Both readings can coexist; the song doesn't resolve which is true.
Context
This appears on a compilation (Classics Volume 1) rather than a studio album tied to a specific period, so dating the song precisely within Martyn's catalogue is difficult without more information. Martyn's work often explores emotionally raw, confessional territory tied to his personal relationships, and his vocal delivery — not analyzed here since only lyrics were provided — is typically central to how songs like this land, often blurring words together in a way that mirrors the lyrical confusion.
Listen for
- How the melodic phrasing treats the flying/cry refrain — whether it resolves or stays unsettled
- Any vocal distortion or slurring that might mirror the lyric's theme of blurred judgment
- The shift in tone, if audible, between the confessional verses and the confused 'can't tell right from wrong' verse
- How the final fragmented lines are delivered compared to the rest of the song — whether they're sung or trail into something closer to speech
About John Martyn
Iain David McGeachy, known professionally as John Martyn, was a British singer-songwriter and guitarist. Over a 40-year career, he released 23 studio albums and received frequent critical acclaim.
1948 - 2009 / United Kingdom
Full biography and catalogue