Love songs really don’t get more romantic than The Ocean by Richard Hawley. And the story behind it only adds to its emotional power.

One of my all-time favourite songs is called Ocean. Another of my all-time favourite songs is called The Ocean, with a definite article. The first is on The Velvet Underground’s live 1969 album; the second is on Richard Hawley’s breakthrough album Coles Corner from 2005. 

It was written when the Sheffield guitarist was at a turning point in his life and career. “I was 31, which felt old for a musician,” he told The Guardian. “I’d come through playing with Treebound Story, Pulp and Longpigs. I’d quit heavy drugs, got married, launched a solo career and been dropped by my label.”

The Ocean was inspired by a trip to Cornwall, where Hawley – “a boy from a smoggy industrial city” – joined his wife and two young children for a family holiday.

Arriving two days later than them, he headed to the beach to find them and saw their silhouettes at the ocean’s edge. “By the time I reached them a song had popped into my head.” 

His vocals, teetering on the brink of emotion, were recorded in a single take, all his frustrations evaporating in the image of being reunited with his family at the seaside. 

That opening line – “You lead me down to the ocean” – sung in his yearning baritone, seems so evocative, so poignant; so resonant, so romantic. 

Strings swell, symbolising the swell of those waves, threatening to drown the twang of his trademark guitar. And it ends, just like that Velvets song, with a trance-like mantra as he chants: “Here comes the wave.”