Home Town was our fifth song and following on the heels of Broken Rules, Cry the Night Away and Summer Flight, ideas for all of which had come to me relatively quickly, I decided to try a couple of experiments of my own.
The first experiment was not to settle for the very first "song story" idea that I came up with. Instead I wrote three sets of lyrics to the music, intending to let Annie choose which one she liked best. As it turned out she chose the one I thought was the strongest so there was no dispute. The benefit of this approach was it gave me confidence that my strongest idea also made the best song (that I was capable of writing).
My second experiment was to attempt to draw directly on whatever creative force had been driving me up until that point. With the earlier tracks I’d been playing them over and over until the words started to come, or an idea for a story suggested itself. This time, I opened a new document, got myself ready to type and then played the music straight through, the idea being to type the first thing that came into my mind as the music was playing. The only preparation I did was a few minutes’ meditation, to try to connect with what you might call ‘my muse.’ I set the music playing, and started typing. At the end of the first run-through, I had written all but three lines of the song. I played the missing sections through again and after a few minutes, the right lines came to me. The whole process took little more than ten minutes for this song.
Home town, place where I joined the fight
Home town, lost in the mists of night
You, you call to me
Hiding your mystery
All the days of my life
All the days of my life
Old town, no longer full of youth
Dark town, telling your tales of truth
Now and silently
Always you call to me
Count the days of my life
Count the days of my life
Come back, come to see your brothers
Come back, something waits for you
Home town, how can you stay the same
Home town, you never take the blame
I can never leave
Show me – I don’t believe
All the days of my life
All the days of my life
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