"Old Flames Can't Hold a Candle to You" is a country song written by singer / songwriter Patricia Rose Sebert and Hugh Moffatt. It was a number 14 U.S. country hit for Joe Sun in 1978, and a number 86 hit for Brian Collins the same year. It was later covered by Dolly Parton, who took it to the top of the U.S. country charts in August 1980. In the song, the narrator tells their lover not to feel threatened by past affairs for these "old flames" are in the past. Parton included her version on her 1980 Dolly, Dolly, Dolly album, and it was released as the album's second single after the success of "Starting Over Again". In 2012, Pebe Sebert's daughter Ke$ha released an acoustic cover of the song as part of her Deconstructed EP.
Famous quotes containing the words flames, hold and/or candle:
“Whatever flames upon the night
Man’s own resinous heart has fed.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“I suppose any note, no matter how sour, sounds like a song if you hold onto it long enough.”
—Dewitt Bodeen (1908–1988)
“The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head—no intricate game of chess where few moves are made in straight-forwardness and ends are attained by indirection, an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing it.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)