Released: May 30, 1986

Songwriter: Will Jennings Steve Winwood

Producer: Steve Winwood Russ Titelman

The story goes, the truth is no one knows
A stranger came, a man who lost his name
At night he tells me his tale, prison, women, wail
The took him in, he let them win
Over and over

He said if you don't have good words to say
Don't wake me up until the Judgment Day
'Cause if nothing is the way it seems
Then this life is just a haunted dream
And all this love is just falling down through the years
And oh, I'd rather sleep

Wake me up on Judgment Day
Let me hear golden trumpets play
Give me life where nothing fails
Not a dream in a wishing well

A man in tattered clothes, crying all he knows
The darkness grows, that's how it goes
Over and over

He said I think of the beauty I've had
And all it does is make me feel so bad
First they make you think you're riding high
Then they toss you off in the sky
And all this life is just falling down through the years
And oh, I'd rather sleep

Wake me up on Judgment Day
Let me hear golden trumpets play
Give me life where nothing fails
Not a dream in a wishing well

Say a prayer for the stranger
Listen to the stranger

Wake me up on Judgment Day
Let me hear golden trumpets play
Give me life where nothing fails
Not a dream in a wishing well

Steve Winwood

Steven Lawrence Winwood is most famous for his solo work, including two number one hits Higher Love and Roll with It, and for being the member of two supergroups, Traffic and Blind Faith, along with helping found the Spencer Davis Group at fourteen years old.

Speaking of which, Mozart had nothing on Winwood as a keyboard

As a boy in middle school, little Stevie Winwood played the Hammond synth for Blues gods and Rock & Roll founders like Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, when they toured in Britain. We’d list more, but it’s exhausting to link all of those names.