Rickie Lee Jones / Flying Cowboys / 1989
The Horses
tender, soaring, bittersweet
Written as a lullaby-like address to a child (widely understood to be written for the songwriter's daughter), the song uses images of flight—birds, wind, horses riding the sky—to talk about growth, separation, and the promise of protection even after independence arrives. It moves from reassurance into a wider meditation on freedom and vulnerability before circling back to tender comfort.
parental love and letting go freedom versus vulnerability flight as spiritual aspiration impermanence of closeness memory of one's own wildness
Who's speaking
An adult speaker, almost certainly a parent figure, addresses a child directly with reassurance and protection; the voice is warm and confident but tinged with awareness of eventual separation, making it emotionally reliable though idealized.
What happens
The song opens with a shared fantasy of flying together, then acknowledges that circumstances may separate speaker and child, offering reassurance that this won't be catastrophic. It expands outward to a universal image of humanity's longing for freedom, represented by a wounded bird grounded and searching, before returning to direct comfort and a closing confession that the speaker was once wild and free too.
How it's built
The song alternates between intimate verses addressed to 'little darlin'' and a soaring chorus built on the horses-in-the-sky image, which repeats with slight variation each time. A bridge-like middle section widens the lens from personal to collective, introducing the broken-winged bird before narrowing back to direct address. The closing lines break from the sung narrative into near-spoken repetition, suggesting a shift from lullaby to confession.
Section by section
Opening verse
The speaker imagines flying together with the child through contrasting weather and moods, establishing flight as shared joy before introducing the possibility of separation, which is immediately softened by reassurance that the bond survives even apart.
First chorus
“riding on the horses”
The horses become the vehicle for the flight metaphor, turning abstract freedom into something tactile and mythic. The promise to catch the child if she falls grounds the fantasy in protective love.
Second verse
The speaker extends the promise of presence through the child's growth and beyond, with the wind itself personified as a caretaker, suggesting that protection can outlast physical closeness.
Bridge
“a broken wing looking all around”
The lens widens from the personal to a collective human cry for freedom, then narrows sharply onto an image of failure or injury, acknowledging that the aspiration to fly is not always realized.
Closing repetition
The speaker drops the child-directed reassurance to admit her own past wildness, reframing the entire song as not just a promise to a child but a memory of her own youthful hunger for freedom, blurring the line between protector and fellow wild thing.
Craft
- extended metaphor
- Flight—birds, horses, wind—stands throughout for freedom, growth, and spiritual yearning, letting the song move fluidly between the personal (a child growing up) and the universal (humanity's search for liberation).
- apostrophe
- The repeated direct address to 'little darlin'' and 'little girl' keeps the song anchored in intimate second-person speech even as the imagery expands outward.
- symbolism
- The bird with a broken wing searching on the ground symbolizes thwarted freedom or spirit, contrasting with the soaring birds and horses elsewhere and giving the song's optimism a shadow of struggle.
- anaphora
- The closing repetition of a phrase about youth functions like a chant, slowing the song down and turning reassurance into self-reflection.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats this as a mother's lullaby that uses flight imagery to prepare a child for eventual independence while promising unconditional safety net—love that doesn't require proximity. The widening to a 'broken wing' and the final confession of having been 'wild' herself suggest a second layer: the speaker isn't only comforting the child but recognizing her own unfinished longing for freedom, making the song as much about the parent's unresolved restlessness as the child's future. Both readings coexist without contradiction.
Context
Flying Cowboys (1989) followed a period of personal upheaval for Jones, including motherhood, and the album as a whole leans into themes of flight, freedom, and domestic tenderness. I don't have confirmed biographical detail tying this specific song to an event, so this is inferred from thematic and album context rather than documented fact.
Listen for
- the shift in vocal tone between the soft verses and the more open, soaring chorus
- how the horses-in-the-sky image recurs with slight lyrical variation each chorus
- the sudden image of the grounded, injured bird interrupting the uplifting imagery
- the spoken-like repetition at the very end, which breaks the lullaby pattern
About Rickie Lee Jones
Rickie Lee Jones is an American singer, musician, and songwriter. Over the course of a career that spans five decades and 15 studio albums, she has recorded in various musical styles including rock, R&B, pop, soul, and jazz.
b. 1954 / United States
Full biography and catalogue