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Smokie, a band often synonymous with the honey-sweet harmonies of 1970s soft rock, underwent a significant period of reinvention following the 1986 departure of original lead singer Chris Norman. The track featured on the 1990 album Whose Are These Boots? , serves as a pivotal example of the band's "Alan Barton era". This paper explores how the song maintains the band's melodic legacy while embracing the more polished, radio-targeted AOR (Adult Oriented Rock) style of the early 1990s. Lyrical Themes: The Weight of Memory
Lyrically, "This Side of Paradise" is a narrative of sudden, fleeting connection and the subsequent obsession with a fading memory.
: The recurring refrain— "What you doing this side of paradise? Trying to make me pay the price" —suggests a struggle with the emotional cost of a love that may have been a dream or a reality.