Been a little while since I done a song. Or so it seems, anyway. In fact I’ve been joining and leaving bands left right and centre (see previous blogs, passim) leaving little time to work on new material. As ever, I’ve got a phone with 100+ scraps of songs to work on so don’t worry: there’s still PLENTY of boring blog posts to come. Anyway, I finally grabbed a few hours this weekend to pull together one such scrap. Usual drill – video, lyrics, and post match discussion.
Lyrics
It’s possible to live on your own
To pull down the curtains and turn off the phone
To make a brand new start
Just close down your heart
And stand apart
The stars will look down on you unchanged
You’ll still feel the sun and you can walk in the rain
You’ll be sad sometimes
There’ll be some lonely times
But you’ll be alright
Impossible now as it might seem to be
It’s possible thoughts and impossible dreams
Might be possible still
Just open your heart and they possibly will come to be real
For impossible you
Marking time by watching the sun
Chalking the hours off they pass one by one
They turn into days
But you might say
That’d happen anyway
Impossible now as it might seem to be
It’s possible thoughts and impossible dreams
Might be possible still
Just open your heart and they possibly will come to be real
For impossible you
Step out in the light – it’ll all be alright
Post match discussion
Quite heartfelt this, isn’t it? The melody actually came a long time before the words did, as is my idiom. The soaring, half sad/half optimistic sound is something I’ve had in mind for a couple of months, but it was only after putting together the basic backing track that I really started to think about the words.
I saw something interested the other day. The songwriter with the Diesel Trees (whose singer I now am!) had sent off a track to a record company, and among their feedback was the observation that “the lyrics are good because they’re not self absorbed.”
It’s very easy when writing songs to start with “I”. It’s fairly natural for us to talk about ourselves. Every one of us is solipsistic to a greater or lesser degree, absorbed by our own woes and trifling emotional journeys. I’m probably as guilty as anyone of that so – taking that feedback to heart – I wrote a song basically aimed at people who are living fairly solitary lives.
It’s hard to tell through the fog of social media what is “truth” and what is a kind of consciously-constructed defence mechanism of harmless but meaningful obfuscation. In particular I see a lot of people who say they are “happy alone.” In fact, I nearly chose that as the title/springboard, but then I dwelt on it a bit longer. A lot of people seem to feel that they’re doomed to being alone and might as well embrace it. I love that sentiment, but the sad romantic part of my soul still hopes that life proves them wrong and somehow they find someone to share their life with.
So this song is for those people. It’s not allegorical or consciously clever. It’s just unusually direct for me.
The only odd thing about this recording is that, after it was done, I listened back and thought: “the vocals sound… odd?” It’s recognisably me, but there’s a weird quality to my voice. After a while it struck me: everything’s in tune.
A dig around the new version of GarageBand I’m using reveals that it has my nemesis autotune installed on a soft default setting. I fucking hate autotune, and I’m none too happy about what it’s done to my voice on this track, so I’m going to circle back around to it next time I have some free time (circa 2033).
UPDATE: I fixed it three days later, so if you’re wondering “what the fuck is he on about?” that’s you
Anyway that’s enough of me droning on. Shouldn’t you be doing something more constructive? I know I should.
Goodbye.