Flew in from Amsterdam
and landed somewhere in New York
The first time that I saw you,
you was drinkin' on your porch

Your dad said 'that's my girl"
I said no worries that's ok
'cause I had known for ages
all that I was gonna say

I travelled all the way from Holland
took me 14 hours to get there
But like Waits said there ain't thing like
bein' with a girl from Jersey
So my future's gonna change
Things'll never be the same
I guess the past has been explained
it all happened for a reason
you call it fate

It took me a few days
before that I made my first move
I just had to be sure now
that you would like me too

From that moment on
my love for you grew every day
And then I slowly realised
that you had felt the same

I travelled all the way from Holland
took me 14 hours to get there
But like Waits said there ain't thing like
bein' with a girl from Jersey
So my future's gonna change
Things'll never be the same
I guess the past has been explained
it all happened for a reason
you call it fate

My mom she was surprised
said I was not allowed to move
Dad said we'll just wait and see
till then I think it's cool

Some friends will just laugh at us
but I really don't mind
If we'll make it through the first few years
You'll end up as my wife

I travelled all the way from Holland
took me 14 hours to get there
But like Waits said there ain't thing like
bein' with a girl from Jersey
So my future's gonna change
Things'll never be the same
I guess the past has been explained
it all happened for a reason
you call it fate

MOTIVATION

Pretty much the story on how I met my then-fiancee.
After a few days our click was so insane that we kept saying how it'd have to be fate that brought us together.

There's a nod to Guns N' Roses' Paradise City as whenever we got in the car the radio station would be playing the song. As for the rest, the music was "inspired" as Noel Gallagher would say, by Guster's Amsterdam. It's a band she's a big fan of and introduced me to. If you don't know them and like a bit of indie pop go check them out, they're pretty good and it's a shame they never made it big. I reckon you've got to be British to be discovered like that, or maybe it's just their American sound? Anyway, I digress a bit here. It was only about a month or 2 later after I'd written this one that I found out chord progressions were a bit the same. It's no direct copy though, I'm not that silly! ;d

I can't remember when I played this to her for the first time. If memory serves me well I let her read the lyrics once I was home, played it for her on Skype, and then played the song for her when I was jamming a bit and she was lying on the couch in the TV room. I was nervous as hell and had promised to play it for her though it'd be the first time I'd actually play her a song I'd been preparing at home.

EXPLANATION

"Landed somewhere in New York" sounds nice, but it's wrong thouh, as it's Newark, New Jersey I landed but that's just the attention to the detail.

"The first time that I saw her you was drinking on your porch" refers to her mom and dad picked me up from the trainstation and the first time I saw her she was having a beer on the porch.

"Your dad said "that's my girl" refers to him saying that his daughter and son (not sure if he was there as well) drinking on the porch was the perfect first impression.

"I had known for ages all that I was gonna say" refers to me having memorized a line from Futurama (A cartoon she was a fan of) as an opening line, because according to her, using a quote from that TV show would get me major points. I screwed up the line though, being way too caught up in taking the piss out of her and our previous jokes online.

"It took me 14 hours to get there" was actually exactly true, I tried to count the hours as to how long it did take me. 1 hour by bus to the train station, then 1 hour by train to the airport, 1 hour to check in, 9 hours on the plane, 1 hour to get out of the airport and then 1 hour by train to her town.

We met through a Bon Jovi community and I always liked the line "like Frankie said I did it my way" from It's My Life, and intended to cite another singer as well. While having been to Bon Jovi we joked around to request Jersey Girl from Tom Waits', and I put one and one together and got my "like Waits said there ain't nothing like bein' with a girl from Jersey" line.