Time Stand Still
(Rick Springfield/Matt Bissonette)

(ticking clock)
Time stand still
It freeze your hands
Bend your will
Change your plan
Burning seconds into minutes
on my way to seize the day
Stolen moments as a lifetime
seems to fly away
Wait for me
A little longer I'm not sure if
I'm awake
Pinch me if it's all a dream
Ticking clocks and wakeup calls
Tell me that I'm growing old
Why don't you let time stand still

Time stand still
Raise your glass
A quarter til
A future past
Turning hours into weekends
Hoping for a better day
Frozen moments in a lifetime
that has run away
Wait for me
A little longer I'm not sure if
I'm awake 
Pinch me if it's all a dream
MTV and shopping malls
Tell me that I'm growing old
Why don't you let time stand still

Burning seconds into minutes
On my way to seize the day
Stolen moments as a lifetime
seems to fly away
Turning hours into weekends
Hoping for a better day
Frozen moments in a lifetime
that has run away
Wait for me
A little longer, I'm not sure if
I'm awake
Pinch me if it's all a dream
(wait for me)
Ticking clocks and wake up calls
Tell me that I'm growing old
(wait for me)
MTV and shopping malls
Tell me that I'm growing old
Empty words on telephones
The greatest story never told
Why can't you let time stand still
Time stand still
Time stand still
Time stand still
Time stand still

Song Facts: This can be found on Venus in Overdrive.

Rick says: Time Stand Still is basically everything is moving so fast and the fact that things are changing.  Just feeling uncomfortable (?) and wanting it to be like it was - Amazon.com promo video

More from US

This is not one of my favorite songs. I don’t know why it seems most of the songs on this CD start out weird for me, and then once they get going, they grow on me. This one is no different, but as it goes, I don’t like much about it, honestly. I don’t like the background, repetitiveness that goes on for quite a while and then it gets really fast again. For some reason, it’s just an ‘all-over-the-place song and I can’t seem to get past that enough to try and focus on the lyrics or the meaning. I usually skip it. - Amy L

According to US

This song runs a close race with the title track as my favorite song from VIO (and sometimes it IS, depending on the mood I’m in). I liked this one from the minute I heard it and I think Rick captured a real “feeling” in this song with the way it’s arranged, the sound effects, his vocal inflections and of course the lyrics. It’s another of those songs that leaves me feeling a bit sad, yet it has upbeat music and a cool rhythm. So it’s a mix of happy, sad and nostalgic all in one for me. Many things come to mind when I hear this song, such as how I’d love to go back to those days of being young, growing up with my best friend (discovering RS at age 13!) and the great times we shared as kids and on through the years. Or wishing I could reverse time to go on my first date with my husband once again. Or what about freezing time while holding my newborn baby girl for the first time? Who wouldn’t love to go back to some of those precious “stolen moments?” 

I feel this song would be awesome live, as it has some great guitar in it and a slamming drum beat, which seems to be the “standout” instrument for this song. Rodger would definitely shine playing this one live! I think the energy of it would really pump the crowd up. (as if we need any help at a Rick show?!!?) 

The ticking clock and the chimes are perfect opening effects for this song, setting the stage for what‘s to come. It’s funny how it takes me back to all the years growing up at home, as my mother got a grandfather clock when I was a young girl. The chimes are reminiscent of her clock (which they still have, a million chimes later)…and the harsh reality that the minutes and hours (and 15-minute intervals) of time are ticking away at “breakneck speed.”

Rick has always seemed to me like the type of person who is less than thrilled with the thoughts of growing old, and really…who is? I certainly am not “cool” with the whole idea myself! I love the “pleading” sound in Rick’s vocals from the first word. “Time stand still. Freeze your hands. Bend your will. Change your plan.” As if the clock has a choice? How I wish it were that simple! I like how he’s blaming the clock itself in this verse with “change your plan,” and it’s like he’s demanding time to please stand still. Apparently Rick longs to slow down the years, like most of us do. Funny how time used to DRAG by as a child, but as an adult, it flies by in a blur most weeks. 

Again, another track from VIO that flips from a slower pace to a faster one from verse to chorus, which has an effective “impact” in this song. I love the abruptness here and the drums kicking in---“Burning seconds into minutes on my way to seize the day. Stolen moments as a lifetime seems to fly away.” How true is that?! It’s bizarre to me when I listen to Rick’s music and realize that yes…half a lifetime HAS “flown away” since I first discovered him in ’81. And along that path there have been good times and bad, days of actually seizing the moment and making awesome memories with family and friends, and then days in which I “planned” to make the most of the day, but it just didn’t work out…days or weeks when you want to say that “time wasn’t on my side today.” Time is a funny thing really. For those days when the minutes and hours seem to drag by, there are others who are feeling like the day has gotten away from them. (The old saying, “Time flies when you’re having fun,” couldn’t be more true!) It's all in your perception. 

I like how they added the thought, “Wait for me, a little longer. I’m not sure if I’m awake. Pinch me if it’s all a dream.” I would suspect that Rick, now being the rock star he always dreamed of as a kid, looks back on his life and the course of events, and probably does feel at times like it’s all a crazy “dream.” The anticipation for something always feels longer than the actual “event.” The “wait for me” part has a feeling of desperation to me, which is how I think most of us feel when we stop during our busy days to reflect and realize how quickly all our precious moments are fleeting. But unfortunately time will not wait…

I like how you don’t really know who the “you” refers to in the next part. “Ticking clocks and wake-up calls. Tell me that I’m growing old. Why don’t you let time stand still.” He (and Matt) could be referring to anyone here…the clock, his wife, his kids. But of course, no one can make it slow down for him. (how I wish we COULD! I would grant him that one wish right now if I had the power to do so.) The echo effects after he says “Time stand still” are just awesome to me…like a distant voice echoing through time…begging for a chance to regain those moments we’ve lost along the way. Back to that driving and almost furious drum beat throughout, which gives it that little extra and leaves the listener with the awareness of how hurried time truly is. We can’t change the “speed” of time, but we can certainly make better use of it. 

Next verse---It’s interesting how he mixed two different ideas of time into one thought, “a quarter ‘til, a future past.” The future. It seems to be something we can never really grab onto, doesn’t it? We dream of it, we plan for it, but then it comes and goes like the wind. It’s almost an unreachable concept in a way. When you get to those things, it becomes the present, and then quickly it becomes the past. A favorite part vocally is when Rick says, “Turning hours into weekends, hoping for a better day.” 

The addition of the lyrics, “MTV and shopping malls, tell me that I’m growing old,” are perfect for a Rick song. After all, Rick WAS a significant part of the history of MTV and it’s beginnings. I’m with you Rick! Those days seem like “just yesterday” to me as well. Times have changed though. Music TV isn’t what it once was when Rick Springfield and many others from those humble first days of MTV were reigning on our TV screens. Shopping as we used to know it “back then” is far from the same. Sure, there are still malls to shop in, but it’s become back burner to online shopping from the comfort of our homes, delivery right to our front doors. 

I love the guitar, music and background vocals in the “break” before they kick into the hasty sound of the last section with Matt and the guys in the back singing, “Wait for me.” To me that pace is effective, once again giving the sense of how a lifetime really is ‘running away from us.’ It winds way up and then back down again for a few seconds into that cool echo-thing before going into more wishful thinking---“Time stand still” repeated over and over before an abrupt ending. One of the best verses of the song is here too---“The greatest story never told. Why can’t you let time stand still.” Despite what we’ve seen our whole lives in sci-fi movies and television and in the land of make-believe where they own time machines and things that freeze people in one place…it’s a ‘truth’ that will never be. As much as we long for it as humans, we can never make time stand still. I agree, it would be the greatest story EVER told, if in fact we could do that for one another. 
Kelley Pearson