Have you ever lost anyone? A friend, a relative, a partner or spouse? To time, to distance, to...life?
There is nothing as agonizing in life as to lose someone who is a part of you. Regardless of which of the above broad categories it fits, the feeling is that of some miserly sprite cracking open your ribs, tossing out your lungs as if they were carburetors and cutting a jagged edge through your heart, only to thrust a dirty blade in your sternum and riding it down past your navel, letting all that is within to slosh about at your feet as it will.
If you haven't experienced this sort of loss, this song is a fair enough introduction; I have - twice, and to "life" - and the emotion that Blunt pushes out with his music and emotes with his voice captures it majestically. I can't listen to this song without that dirty blade finding its way back up to my heart.
As gruesome and depressing as this may sound, this song was by far my favorite of 2006.