Tom Smith’s deeply existential and timeless “Lights of New York City” is one song that should accompany all of us through life’s stages – its indelible impact on our breath, in the sustenance of post-punk life, as we reflect on our own ephemerality.
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Stream: “Lights of New York City” – Tom Smith
Tom Smith’s “Lights of New York City” speaks profoundly to missed opportunities and lived realities, to those moments when everything appears to be at hand.
Perhaps we have all experienced this in life: One moment, it is there; the next, it has dissipated – a trace that can never be recovered.
From my own experience, this song holds its own incredible memories. I think of my life with Sabina, and of the two of us peering from the windows of Stadium apartments in upstate New York, at Syracuse University. There, we dreamed our young collegiate lives and captured an intense sense of joie de vivre that saturated our existence. We lived on the dying cusp of the analog days, and we relished them: vinyl from EBTG and The Smiths, candles of molten wax that burned through the night, and cloth and paper books that nourished our souls. We were idealists and dreamers, and as Tom Smith sings, perhaps in some ways “we didn’t know we were living” as we dreamed of being beyond time. In those moments, it seemed that our feet barely touched the ground.
We did not feel or sense the meaning of those who told us life had to be lived in a certain way. We were bending reality in real time, creating our own interior world – one in which we desired to alter the very fabric of how one exists in life.
We would often drive from Syracuse to New York City in those days and years, in our brilliant youth. In that lush autumnal time, we surged through the fading sunset to reach those lights of New York City. When I hear Tom Smith’s song in this moment, I feel how remarkably he captures the nostalgic mood of what we were experiencing. The existential dynamic comes to a head: This is an ode to lost time and lost opportunities, to chances that ultimately become so very fleeting – something almost always learned in retrospect. The missed moment of telling someone that you loved them. The missed time that you forgot to tell that person that they are the most important friend. When time gets away from you, it is often no longer traceable.
Sabina and I always embraced the ephemeral and the non-traceable, and we understood how deeply those forces are entwined with creating memory. We embedded that truth within ourselves as we sat together on the Fondamenta delle Zattere in Venezia on the glorious golden afternoon of January 4, 2026. As the sun flooded our souls, we intensely learned the meaning of Depeche Mode’s reminder that sometimes “words are so unnecessary.” We sat there with the most idyllic Spritz on probably one of the best terraces in the world, overlooking the Giudecca Canal. We knew without speaking that what we were witnessing was entirely unlike any memory that could be created anywhere else on this planet in that precise moment. There are moments in your life that are irreplaceable and utterly meaningful. They provide you with the sustenance and inspiration to live beyond time, creating memory over matter. That was one of these moments.
Back in New York City in the ‘90s, we always had those hallways of The Gramercy Park Hotel. There, we danced until the breaking dawn, watching “the lights of New York City drowning in the Hudson where they belong,” as we created the further intricate designs of our interior world. As we stepped into the boundless night of Manhattan, we would wind ourselves around the corner and plunge into a bottle of prosecco at a street café. Later, we were destined to connect with others as we celebrated and languished long into the night at Café Noir @ 32 Grand at Thompson in Soho.
During those years in New York City, Café Noir was the only destination. It was the most vibrant of multicultural meeting places, filled with people from around the world and an incredible vibe where everyone talked with everybody. I deeply recall the substance of those meaningful conversations with friends and strangers on the stoop of Café Noir. They made our wings soar as we delighted down the street, setting the night alight till 4am in the ambers of Le Streghe. We forged new meanings of the self, a pivotal act at our young and tender age as we tried to create our own sense of meaning and significance. Tom Smith has indelibly explored that same search since his beginnings with Editors, particularly through their groundbreaking 2005 album The Back Room – a vital punk LP of the ages.
Those halcyon days with Sabina were a brilliance. And yet, to this day in 2026, we continue to set the streets of New York City on fire, positing with others on random street corners as we try, always, to resuscitate life. People always critique the idealists, the romantics, and the dreamers. Tom Smith has always been one of these guys, and his brilliance has only made the world more crystalline, poignantly significant, and ultimately more beautifully inhabitable.
Oh, the lights of New York City
Drowning in the Hudson
where they belong
We didn’t know we were living
We didn’t know we were living
The light of New York City
Broken up and drift into the dawn
We didn’t know we were living
You can hear us if you listen
And oh, it’s such a pity
We can’t meet again
when we were young
It’s right there in your hand
Tom Smith’s voice whispers in my ear and reminds me that “you can hear us if you listen.” Perhaps the scents and ghosts of our imprints remain on New York City to this very day. This incredible and beguiling city surely remains on us until our very own dust.
The deeply existential and timeless “Lights of New York City” is one song that should accompany all of us through life’s stages. Its indelible impact lingers in the breath and sustenance of post-punk life, inviting us to reflect on our own ephemerality.
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Stream: “Lights of New York City” – Tom Smith
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