[Instrumental Intro: bright chiming electric guitar] [Verse 1: close, conversational, fully sung] You're gonna love it. I've been there. You haven't been anywhere yet. The water's warm as a bath and clear to the bottom, and the turtles don't care about you. They're eating. You can float right over one, sun on your back, and it just keeps eating. I'll teach you to float. Somebody taught me. You put your ears under and the whole world shuts up except your own breathing, and that's the best sound there is. (That's the best sound there is.) [Pre-Chorus: gradually building] I've got the ferry times. I've got the beach. I've got the snorkel sizes guessed. I've had this planned since I was small. I just never had the passengers. [Chorus: wide, belted, full-band lift] I'll take you to Maho Bay. I've had it planned for years. I'll take you to Maho Bay the second you get here. Doors off the Jeep, wrong side of the road, turtles in the shallows, nobody's cold — I'll take you to Maho Bay. Whoever you are. [Verse 2: close, conversational, fully sung] Your mother drives. That's not negotiable. They drive on the left down there in cars built for the other side, and she'll take the hairpins like she's mad at them and let me run the music from the seat with no wheel. There's donkeys in the road. They don't move. You honk, they look at you like you're the problem. Your mother's gonna love that. She's gonna love all of it. I haven't met her. I haven't met her yet. But she drives. [Pre-Chorus: gradually building] A storm came through a few years back and took the trees right off the hills. They came back. Nobody had to ask. I've had this planned since I was small. I just never had the passengers. [Chorus: wide, belted, full-band lift] I'll take you to Maho Bay. I've had it planned for years. I'll take you to Maho Bay the second you get here. Doors off the Jeep, wrong side of the road, turtles in the shallows, nobody's cold — I'll take you to Maho Bay. Whoever you are. [Bridge: stripped to one clean electric guitar and dry lead vocal] I'm thirty-two. The beach is picked. The ferry's twenty minutes. The road's a joke. The turtles don't know your name, and neither do I. That's not a sad story. Don't you make it one. It's a plan with empty seats, and I'm not filling them with anything else. Not a boat. Not a girl I'd have to talk myself into. Nobody rides in those seats but you. [Final Chorus: explosive, full band, vocal cracking at the peaks] I'll take you to Maho Bay. I've had it planned for years. I'll take you to Maho Bay the second you get here. Doors off the Jeep, wrong side of the road, your mother at the wheel, whoever she is, turtles in the shallows, nobody's cold — I'll take you to Maho Bay. Whoever you are. (Whoever you are.) [Outro: bare, close-mic, dry, unprocessed] And if you take your time, I'll go ahead. I'll go this winter, by myself, and float, and put my ears under, and make sure it's still there. It's still there. I'll take you. [End: hard stop, no fade]
