Christopher Cross · 1983 · Behind the Songs
“Think of Laura” is a song about memory, and about the way a person can stay present in your life long after they are gone.
“Think of Laura” is a song about memory, and about the way a person can stay present in your life long after they are gone. It is one of Christopher Cross’s most tender performances, sung softly, as if loudness would break the spell.
Released on the album Another Page in 1983 and as a single that same year, the song was written by Cross. It was inspired by the death of a young woman, Laura Carter, a friend of Cross’s, and it carries that grief without ever becoming heavy-handed. Instead, it offers comfort: the idea that thinking of someone, really thinking of them, keeps their light alive.
The arrangement is spare and gentle, with piano and voice at the center. Cross does not oversing. He lets the melody carry the feeling, and the result is a record that has comforted many listeners who have lost someone of their own. It became a hit, but its real success is quieter and harder to measure: it is a song people turn to when words are hard to find.
Listen to it when you need to remember someone. That is what it was made for, and it still does that work beautifully.