‘Michael & Peter’ doesn’t fall at the exact center of Frank Sinatra’s Watertown, but it is nonetheless the emotional centerpiece of the album. So much hope, pride and regret is packed into the song’s five minutes.
It starts off with a slow intro in which the abandoned husband describes his two sons. “If you look at them both for awhile, you can see that are you, they are me,” he says, beautifully summing up the way we see ourselves in our children, not just physically but emotionally.
The song then kicks it up a gear, and we get our first glimpse of the life this man is leading on his own. Unlike in ‘For Awhile,’ it now feels like he really is moving on and making the best of things.