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A Strange Love

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“…Everybody’s waiting up to hear if I dare speak your name
Put it deep beneath the track, like the hole you left in me
And everybody wants to know ’bout how it felt to hear you scream
They know you walk like you’re a God, they can’t believe I made you weak…”

© Halsey/Elliot/Larcombe, from the album “Badlands”, 2015

Pretty much the last one from the current writing spell. This one is again, slated for the Time Demands album although it is thematically, not really there; is it more thematically correct for Echoes? Meh. I’m not sure. It doesnt have any kind of Suno connection at all yet – and given today’s announcement of Suno doing a deal with Warner Brothers, chances are it may not have that connection at all, if what happened to Udio is anything to go by…

As I’ve alluded to before, there has been an awful lot of noise around the use of AI (either by those who are only interested in scooping up as much of the micropayments for streaming as they can by poking holes in the mechanisms built by the streamers and their attendant distributors, or by the industry itself whining rather hypocritically about “theft” and grumbling that people should protect the artists… when they really mean that people should protect the labels interest in the artists. Most of it is bullshit and agendas….), but as I’ve gone to great lengths to state on here, my interest is not in trying to get micropayments for tracks that Suno has helped me bring to life; it is now about using it as part of my workflow to create new pieces. If that is going to be throttled or asphyxiated by the major labels, as seems to be the case, then using it as a tool is likely to change dramatically… but, we’ll wait and see.

ANYWAY. Digression again, right on schedule!

This one has been dormant in a book for an extremely long time. Again, it goes back to one of the BASCA writing retreats run by Rita Campbell back in 2014/15; this one was under some …. consideration, I think is the best way of describing it by myself, Sean O’Connell and another chap called Alex who’s surname escapes me. It was being written to a brief that Rita had given us and the direction it was drifting towards was more the modern electronic pop/funk direction; Alex’s notion was that it could have/maybe should have been written for Will Young or an artist like him. At the time, Sean and I were both open to that, having listened before to Young’s Your Game album produced by Stephen Lipson (one of my favourite and most influential producers). The lyrics that were kicked around were mainly a series of rhyming contradictions and opposites and apposites.

From my memory, we ummed and ahhed and wandered around crashing about in the dark for an afternoon on a Sunday and by 7pm, when it was time to go into Monmouth to the pub for a quiz evening and say goodbye, we still hadnt got anything solid. Alex was the main driver, so whether he did anything with it later on his own, I do not know.

So far as I’m concerned, this set of lyrics with the Will Young kind of vibe that I have in mind is one that as a work in mind (and when it will be finished) will be one that is unique to me. Obviously if Alex and Sean see otherwise, I’m sure we can still talk, LOLZ.

So, as I said… the majority of it is wordplay, its not about anyone that any of us knew and certainly not about anyone who I’ve known. Music, I have an idea about, that sort of early 2000’s electro-funk… kinda Level 42 sort of feel but more synth-y…. but we’ll see where it wants to go before we decide.

A Strange Love

I havent seen you all day
But I’ve been thinking about you all night.
Cant help feeling what I do
but I know its not right
I know you dont feel that way about me
When I want to kiss you
But all the things you say
You made me think that you do…

Its a Strange Love…
Its a Strange Love…

I dont know how this love works
Or even if it does at all
Were you really my type or was it heart over hype
Never thought I’d be here with you…

Its a Strange Love…
Its a Strange Love…

(…..so what happens now?)

We’re somewhere strange
In a strange place
You didnt laugh at my jokes so, dont laugh in my face
Its so strange the way we behave…

Sitting in the dark
and replaying the scene
Maybe I should have told you
What I really mean

about this
Strange Love
(so strange the way we behave)
Strange Love
Strange Love
(somehow, somewhere, some day, in a strange world)

© Lyrics Steve McCarthy-Hunt, 2025

Where Are My Heroes Now?

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“…Don’t the best of them bleed it out?
While the rest of them peter out
Truth or consequence, say it aloud
Use that evidence, race it around…“

© Grohl/Smear/Mendel, 1997 from the album “The Colour & The Shape”

Another track, currently slated for the Time Demands album. It may, just possibly, may go onto Echos Of Unmade Miles, as I’m debating as to whether it thematically fits onto Time Demands…. it sort of does because of the subject matter…. our heroes have their time and then they move on to the next realm to do whatever they have to do in that next place… but who comes to take their place? Who are the new heroes?

As I alluded to in an earlier post, this one was kinda born in a separate form and this is effectively a different iteration of the same track. As I said on the recent Next Chapter update post, it was something that came up on a BASCA songwriting retreat at the late Monnow Valley Recording studios in Monmouthshire, between three of us.

I had a one third stake in it, by virtue of being in the room and producing the demo on Cubase and contributing lines towards the song and the storyboarding of the song. Its performance at Open Mic nights around Leicestershire by its lead composer and driving force led to me getting my first ever PRS cheque. It allowed me to call myself, very very very loosely, a professional songwriter. Not something I shout from the rooftops, because while I can write and while I do write, I dont make a living from it as a “real” professional would and I dont expect to. As I’ve often said, I dont do it for money. But anyway, we’re digressing again.

Now, this particular version, all it shares with the one that was performed elsewhere is the framework of the story behind it.. The framework is that it is based around someone who first heard their hero’s performances on record, on radio and on TV when they were much younger and they have followed their hero’s careers ever since as they grow older. Their material was part of the rites of passage of getting older and the listeners just expect the performer, the hero, to always be there, growing old alongside them and continuing to buy their material, go to their gigs, keep buying the t-shirts, and so on and so on.

And then 2016 happened and it started with Colin Vearncombe from Black in January of that year which was bad enough, as I had fond memories of Black’s debut album… then David Bowie, which was kind of unexpected…. then Glenn Frey, which hit me really hard as I’d loved his work with the Eagles and he was no doubt about it, an inspiration… and it just got worse and worse throughout the whole year. It was like hardly a month went by without another passing.

Jimmy Bain from Rainbow, bassist on the magnificent, timeless Rainbow Rising album.
Maurice White from Earth Wind and Fire. Absolutely irreplaceable driving force behind the band who my uncle and the rest of Intensive Heat loved as much as breathing itself.
Paul Gordon from the B52’s. Legendary Beatles Producer and Air Studios owner Sir George Martin. Keith Emerson. Jimmy Vand Zandt. Prince, for christssakes. When Prince’s death was announced on Radio 2 in the car and I was driving home from work, I remember clearly shouting to no one else in the car “Oh come on FFS, thats enough, f’ing stop it!”

…Billy “Me & Mrs Jones” Paul. Bobby “Rubber Ball” Vee. Leonard Cohen. Leon Russell. It was just relentless.

Greg Lake. Rick Parfitt from Status Quo…. by the time it got to George Michael on Christmas Day 2016, I was feeling punchdrunk. I dont know how I can explain how the passing of artists that I never personally knew and never personally met and in most cases, never even saw live… how can you feel the loss as keenly as you do, if the connection is only through their work? I cannot explain it, but I know that when I see video footage or hear music by Bowie, Earth Wind & Fire or George Michael in particular, I’m filled with an immense sadness and I miss their work and their contribution to the tapestry of music that makes up my life.

I tried to rationalise it in the sense of trying to see it from the performers side too as well as just the fans perspective.

Again, like a lot of this work so far, it is first draft lyrics and the form is pretty loose and kinda proggy, but I dont necessarily see it going in that direction. As with the others, theres not really a proper coherent beginning/middle/end storyboard to it but I do pose the question; where are the next generation of heroes coming from?

And ten years later, its not particularly clear. Some deserve to be heroes for their age ( you could arguably say Adele, Chris Martin, Jarvis Cocker, Paddy MacAloon), some were knocking on the door anyway of that status… but others, while they are no doubt successful dont have that global footprint, that ubiquity…. James Dean Bradfield, Matt Bellamy – guitar heroes are in painfully short supply at the moment, beyond Bonamassa and the emerging Chris Buck – and who is going to follow on from the likes of Carol King, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, David frickin’ Gilmour and many many others? None of them can stay forever and you could say well, they are here for their time and new ones will come along to take their place.

Sam Fender, Lewis Capaldi, maybe…. and there are a few others that have the potential to be these global artists… but not like the ones that burned into a nation’s consciousness like these guys and girls did. I dont genuinely see this generation of superstars being replaced by a new one.

Maybe they wont. Maybe they shouldnt be. Maybe the era of the rock hyperstars is over and done and will never come back. If thats the case, I’m just glad that I was lucky enough to be around at the same time as these guys as they gave my life a soundtrack, while it happened and that is something I will treasure forever.

This is my tribute to them, I guess….

Oh and while we’re at it: theres at least two album titles in there, either directly named or obliquely and they were definitely albums that changed my life.. and at least three other references in lines to very well known songs. Very well known indeed….

Where Are My Heroes Now?

I was young when I heard your song
In a house full of sounds
The FM radio hummed into life
And your melodies remind me of where I’m from

Vinyl dreams and tapes of stories
The bringer of storms and the kick inside of my heart
Spinning around like a carousel
And I learned how to love and cry as I fell under your spell

Late at night as the sun goes down
A sonic rite of passage to another world
Painted diamonds in the sky
Firing the imagination of this child

I followed you through the concert halls
Stadiums and arenas followed on
Feeling the energy coming from the stage
Finding the place where I thought I’d belong

Ten minute stories from you from the road
Became the soundtrack to all of our lives
Watching you on MTV
Stuck a flag in my heart that to this day still flies

Never crossed my mind as I got older
That in turn, you would grow older too
Your music was my ever present
The rock for my undsteady heart,
And the one thing I would always cling to

It was a time to learn how to heal
When life’s dreams managed to vanish into the wind
Your music was always in our hearts
And now for another new generation it all begins

So where are my heroes now?
Your songs will never get older
Some will follow in your footsteps
Inspired by your devotion to make them bolder
Your music and your art so sublime
Where are my heroes now?
May you always never get older
I will always remember your sound…

© Lyrics by Steve McCarthy-Hunt 2025

picture: By Tpaairman – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26937651

“Hang On Lads…. change of plan…”

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Might seem to be a bit of an odd one to have two posts in a day. However…. not without good cause.

Putting it in its simplest terms, the EP formerly known as Mondegreen is not going to be completed in the timeframe that I was intending it to. To use the vernacular, it has been “canned“.

The main reason that it has been shelved indefinitely is related to the migration from the old Mac Pro 5,1 to the new Mac Studio M1 Ultra. There were 7 Cubase hard drives in the Mac Pro and not that many spaces in the storage arrays for the M1 Ultra. One of the old hard drives had been presenting problems for a while and was known to be on its way out and liable to fail. I had, or so I thought, copied a signficant amount of the data that I had needed from that drive to another existing old hard drive. The migration exercise that I undertook a few days ago to shift as much of the work and the vst’s and plugins to newer, more stable drives was meant to cover this particular vulnerability off and there was one drive that was left that I didnt know what was on it, which I’ve just been checking this evening.

The long and short of it is, as disappointing as it sounds, the work that has been done for Mondegreen is now found to be incomplete. The three cover versions are available on existing disks that are on the network and they can still be worked on in Cubase 14. However, the files for Cross & Leave (On An Outwave), Love Me Or Leave Me Alone and Revolution In The Rain have disappeared into thin air and their sound files cannot be found across any of the disks. While I am disappointed in that the time invested in those three songs has been lost, I have to be brutally honest in saying that in at least 2 of the 3 cases, I was less than 100% happy with the direction that those tracks had been going in compared to the visions I originally had for them.

Given also that the failing hard drive which I suspected that these songs were all on, has now been disposed of, destructively... its a tough lesson but its one that I have to take on the chin, theres not an awful lot I can do about it now.

So…. as it stands at this moment in time, Mondegreen, as of today, is erased from the schedule. Time Demands is still on the slate and I am hoping that I can start making that work a lot less ethereal than it currently is and there is also the decision to be taken as to whether any of the tracks that were Suno developed on The Echo Of Unmade Miles are going to be re-done and overdubbed and made less AI-ey…. Mondegreen may come back in another form in a year or so and it is likely that Revolution In The Rain and Love Me Or Leave Me Alone will be revisited and we will see what we can do with them… so I have plenty to keep me occupied over the coming months. Just that Mondegreen will not be one of those projects.

Onwards and upwards though. No time for looking back. Tomorrow is another day.

What Kind Of Man?

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“Im thinking about how/people fall in love in mysterious ways
Maybe its all part of a plan/And I’ll just keep on making the same mistakes
Hoping that you’ll understand….”

© Sheeran/Wadge, “Thinking Out Loud” from the album “X”, 2014

Well, this is quite an old one which has a bit of a story to it. When I first wrote No Getting Over You, back in 2014, I used a Native Instruments Kontakt instrument/sampled pattern from a pack called Strummed Acoustic to get the ideas in place for the song, to help work out the arrangement.

Those chords and that pattern did not survive to see the finished track. That was changed dramatically and ended up being much more manually played rather than using Kontakt for the final version, with a Taylor GS Mini being the main instrument, one that I had bought in California a year before when visiting a relative for a 60th birthday party (a very very long story).

This particular pattern though, led to another track being generated, another set of lyrics being written around it with a new topline. And, as always with the best of intentions, I thought…. yeah, I’ll come back to that one day and finish it off.…

Twelve years later…. I was digging around in an A4 binder of rough notes today and thought that I ought to do something with it. So, it has been added to the KOAS roster of tracks and while I may well resurrect the original concept for this evening there are two versions of it that have been generated by Suno, which are available at https://suno.com/song/397f41ee-2729-4ecd-9fe5-8e6a02f6998a this link here..

So far as the story of the lyrics is concerned; yes, it is related to No Getting Over You, like a cousin once removed, if I may be so bold. It was inspired by one of the same women of that song, the one referred to in the third verse. As so many love songs are, it is very much unrequited, about giving and not getting in return and that there are always obstacles in the way to the path of true, meaningful love. As I’ve discussed where the other song is concerned, there is an awful lot of water under that bridge now and I’ve learned a lot in the intervening time, LOLZ.

But today, while I’m getting used to the new studio, I thought it a good opportunity to dig this one out and put a placeholder version out via Suno to see what it could do with it and the flamenco feel was about the best way that I could describe it to the machine… and I dont think its turned out too bad. Im not sure that the Suno cut is going to be the definitive version, but we shall have to wait and see. There are an awful lot of others in the queue in front of it for real recording time…

What Kind Of Man
/verse 1
You gave your love to me
(but you didnt mean it)
What kind of man would I be
(If I couldnt see it)

Hours led to days and weeks when I sensed that it wasnt true
(and theres more to the eye than your heart has denied) In the space between me and you…

I couldnt make you listen
To all the things I tried to say to you.

/Verse 2
I came to you ‘cross the sea
(but you didnt feel it)
Youve gone and changed the man in me
(though you didnt mean it)
Miles and mountains and oceans that always stood between me and you
(and I see you at night in the trees and the stars and sometimes in a waning moon)

But you dont want to listen
To all the things that I’d said to you…

/Verse 3
Did you give any love to me?
(Or did you take what you needed?)
I listened to your body speak
(You didnt want me to hear it)
Nights turned to hours under my fingers when they felt for you
(and your body supplied what your heart then denied and stopped this one and one becoming two)
But I would only listen….. To the words I ever wanted to…

© Words and music by Steve McCarthy-Hunt, 2014.
© Words by Steve McCarthy-Hunt, music by Suno AI, 2025.

Latest Update – and a “new” EP….

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“….We live in the shadows and
We had the chance and threw it awayAnd it’s never going to be the same‘Cause the years are falling by like the rainIt’s never gonna be the same‘Til the life I knew comes to my house and saysHello, hello (it’s good to be back)Hello, hello (it’s good to be back)….”

© Glitter/Noel Gallagher/Mike Leander, “Hello” from the album ‘Whats The Story Morning Glory?’, 1995

This is getting to be like London buses of old… nothing for ages, then three at once.

My last two posts were about two particular things; the release of the Monochrome EP which finally happened, after a long long gestation period and just immediately prior to that, my discovery of AI as a songwriting tool. Well, this particular post leans more on the latter as a source of inspiration as opposed to the former.

Monochrome has been uploaded to the usual place (my Soundcloud account) and has been monetized (my god, what an exercise in patience that was…. I can understand why a lot of artists dont bother…) and following on from that, I immersed myself fully in what Suno could do for me as a remote collaborative tool/substitute topline writer/composer/etc etc etc.

I made the effort to go trawling through a lot of old material, both that is on here and otherwise – going back indeed as far as the ideas for the soundtrack to a screenplay which I wrote back in 2005 called Chasing A Rainbow. Most of the songs from that period were composed from MIDI loops, both piano and drums and were somewhat limited in their scope, I think is probably the politest way of describing it… they were written as part of my learning process of being a writer and a lyricist. In most cases for that particular soundtrack, I had tried writing the more traditional way with the music first and the words being developed by scatting around it and seeing what fell out. In a lot of cases when it comes to songwriting, a lot of very successful artists have done just that for generations and it has worked admirably.

However…. when you’re trying to write something for a screenplay, thats a different matter, it has to tie in with the story. There were a couple of tracks on that screenplay soundtrack where I tried that and didnt really get anywhere in trying to get any music behind them… because I didnt really know how to compose properly at the time. Some might argue that I still dont, especially if I’m leaning on AI these days, but I dont need that kind of person in my life, LOLZ.

Anyway. I can feel myself digressing again, for a change. What I meant to say is that I’ve had a very good look around the collection of lyrics that I’ve got, many of which – most of which, actually – are on this site and have all their backstories in place. Some have ended up with revised names, but as I alluded to in one of my previous posts; the lions share of them have not done anything for the last decade from when they were written in a front room in Wiltshire; some had a cursory sniff from collaborators and one or two may have had versions recorded, as local demos for one particular collaborator but they have enough of their own material to publicise and they rightly play to their own strengths. And, I thought at the time, that I had written stronger stuff which in some cases, I did have the music for. For these songs, I had a kind of feel in mind, but no music and I didnt have the time back then to just keep on kicking ideas around until something happened, I had to concentrate on my profession and earning a living and the songs that I did have ready music for which ended up on the three EP’s that I’ve written and released already under the KOAS brand.

These other songs were languishing, but I always had complete confidence in the lyrics themselves and my experience with what Suno has managed to do with them has, to my mind, proven that. Even really difficult, challenging ambient pieces like Song For Jane and Epitaph – I had a notion as to what I wanted them to be, but somewhat embarrassingly for a producer, I hadnt a notion as to where to start. And, as I didnt have a female vocalist to hand and didnt really have the means to pay for a professional to do it – Suno has allowed me to bring these songs to life.

So….. I decided anyway to develop them into an album/EP … one that I elected to call The Echo Of Unmade Miles (A Collection Of Lost Hours).. and yes, that title was AI generated as well, LOLZ. Now, if I used all the tracks currently in the SUNO library, it would be enough for a triple album, if not more. However, while all the tracks are viable, not everyone of them is a standout. I will most likely make use of another of Suno’s features, which is being able to break out the tracks into stems and overdub them myself in Cubase once the house move is completed. And in that respect some of them may change again, and maybe others wont. Depends on how much time I get to indulge myself, LOLZ.

…but as it stands at the moment, the decision was taken to make use of the tracks that have been created from my lyrics using SUNO and to release them as The Echo Of Unmade Miles. They are in the usual place on Soundcloud, namely here:

I also made the effort to generate as much about this particular project around AI as I could, so that I could set it distinctly apart from the rest of my works, particularly Mondegreen, (which I still have to finish); the pictures used for the album cover/artwork were all generated in Chat GPT, the concept being that it is paying tribute to my Anglo American/Puerto Rican heritage, that I am half New Yorker, carrying a guitar case and walking towards a rainbow…. maybe even chasing it. Cant possibly imagine where that idea came from, LOLZ.

So… to draw things to a conclusion, so that I can get on with packing to move house (tomorrow, before you ask, so I am a tad up against it timewise), the material is out there, I hope that you get a chance to listen to it and to see if you like it; there should be a good, recognisable lyrical thread to the material and as always, I hope you enjoy it. As I say, it may get revisited in a year or two, once the new studio room is set up and the idea of re-doing/remixing a good number of the tracks from No Expectations has not been completely discounted…. there is a lot to do. And thats before we think about writing anything new so, theres a lot going on. Coins In A Fountain, Burning Bridges, Song For Jane, Unspoken Words, Epitaph, Song For Jane, Strange Girl, Heart and Every Time I See Her are ones that I am particularly happy with and are good standalone works that could have been written/performed by a real commercial writing team (ahem).

But, have a listen when you get the chance over the summer please and absolutely feel free to let me know what you think; both of the songs themselves and the whole AI In Music debate which is raging like a brushfire at the moment.

Til next time, I hope you enjoy the summer.

KOAS Album Release Day – Monochrome

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Well, after too many days, too many months and years, Monochrome has been released today, in the last few minutes in fact.

I’m happy with it and the key thing that has taken it this long to have been released is that I had to be sure in myself that it was as good as I could get it to be before letting it out of the door to play nicely with all the rest of the music that is released every day all over the world.

As usual, it has been released primarily on Soundcloud where I have a Pro account and can be found at the following location:

https://soundcloud.com/steven-mccarthy-hunt/sets/monochrome

As ever, its never been about money and it never ever will be. I never expect anyone to pay for my art. This is my passion, this is what I do and these songs are my musical legacy and the story of my life and loves over the last 20 years. I share them because I believe in them and because they say who I am and what I am. I hope you like them and can see the evolution in both the material and how they have been recorded and produced as I have learned more about what it takes to record and release a record these days.

I may also release it through Bandcamp, but I’ve not made that decision yet. The main release site was always going to be Soundcloud, it has been the one place where I have always released and shared any work that I have done, whether it be my own compositions, or whether it has been collaborations with my dear friends and former bandmates, or production work that I may have done for others.

Monochrome has had a somewhat long and some may say tortuous gestation period; I used to wryly joke that even Tears For Fears didnt take as long releasing albums as this. Perhaps, given that there was a very long time between Everybody Loves A Happy Ending in 2004 and when The Tipping Point was released in 2022, that doesnt quite ring true anymore, LOLZ. But nonetheless, most of the songs were written between 2012 and 2017 and ever since the release of No Expectations, back in 2017, I’ve been working on this EP, fitting it around normal daily life and progress has often been millimetric. And, I had hoped originally to release Mondegreen on the same day, in the same way that I did 8 years ago with London Road. Due to the big changes coming up of retirement from the Day Job and moving house and building a new studio, unfortunately that isnt going to be possible yet.

It is unlikely that I will get to work on Mondegreen much before October 2025 and the material is in nothing like the advanced state that Monochrome was and is and will need rolling in an awful lot more glitter before it gets let out of the door, like a housecat that has been locked up indoors for too long, LOLZ. Its not quite ready to zoom out of the door and roll around in the dust, purring, just yet…. (surely its not just our cat that does that?)

Anyway, I can feel myself digressing again already. I am also likely to be working on the next KOAS project which will go under the working title of Time Demands (Lord alone knows when that’ll be ready, LOLZ) and there are a lot of influences and different directions that can take.

I can promise that it wont be full of AI versions (I may release a separate collection purely of Suno-generated cuts at some point in the future, just to show what is possible with this kind of work). Suno is a part of my songwriting journey at the moment though and Time Demands is likely to be some years away yet, so lets see where the journey takes us. AI may or may not be partially involved if at all. Too early to say.

In the meantime… I hope you like Monochrome… I made it as good as I could, It tells the stories that I want it to and… its another chapter in the KOAS book.

Heres to the next one and I’ll be in touch soon.

Much love to all.

Latest Update, June 2025

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“…If everything could ever be this real forever
If anything could ever be this good again
The only thing I’ll ever ask of you
You’ve got to promise not to stop when I say when…”

© David E. Grohl, 1997 from the album “The Colour And The Shape”

Well… its been a long, long time. I havent updated this blog since like, forever. Thats not to say that there haven’t been things happening. There absolutely have been, I can promise you that, LOLZ.

Thank you for coming back and returning to this long, long old journey with me. I’m sorry I’ve kept you waiting for so long.

…but there has been an awful lot of Real Life Getting In The Way, which I guess is something that happens a lot to creatives, whether they be professionals or not. Whilst I have been pushing on with the two KOAS EP’s (and boy has that progress been millimetric at times), I have not been writing for a while. Most of the creative efforts have been around slowly but surely inching the two KOAS EP’s closer and closer to the finish line.

And they are indeed, almost there.

Well, to be specific, one of them is. Monochrome is at a very advanced stage and is due to be finished within the next 4 weeks. Mondegreen, on the other hand has faced some challenges along the way and as a result is going to slip until probably the autumn of this year when I will do my best to finish it.

More of Monochrome later on.

Mondegreen, on the other hand…. While I was quite content with the tracks as they’d been built, no matter how much I tried to bash Hate into shape and to bring the lyrics into it which I had written, they just wouldnt fit. No matter what. That was kinda disappointing because in and of themselves, as components, they were good. They just wouldnt play nicely together and it quickly became obvious that it had to be at least temporarily parked while I got on with the rest of the project.

So, something told me that I had to put that song to one side and come back to it some other time. It could be that the music and the lyrics will be parted out and end up coming back to life in other compositions that are wildly different from what I conceived for them, its too early to tell.

In its place came Love Me Or Leave Me Alone, which has had a sniff at Real Life already, thanks to my long time collaborator David Barnes, (or David Bjorn as he is now known). It is pretty much in the form that I envisaged that it would be, with the exception of the Nutini-style vocals which I heard in my minds ear when I first wrote the words.

In terms of it being a good enough track to be included on the Mondegreen EP and for it to be thematically correct to be on it, it definitely ticks those boxes. There are going to be three covers that are on that EP (I cant remember if I said what they would be or not, so just in case I didnt, I’m going to be open about it now). They are three tracks that have had a profound effect on me over the years and ones that I had been confident (at some point) that I would have been able to do some sort of justice to. They were originally meant to be just piano and voice, but I would be kidding myself if I were to stand there with my chest puffed out thinking that I had strong enough piano chops or indeed a strong enough voice to be able to really pull these tracks off in their simplest form.

So, I had to think somewhat laterally and I think the best way of putting it is that I should capitalise on the bits that I can really do properly and then leverage the other things at my disposal to make these versions all that they could be.

….Which is a euphemism for tuning software and EZKeys, LOLZ.

I have no shame in admitting it. Those who really know me know that I have no problem in leaning on technology. I dont lean on technology like a drunk does to a lamp-post, but I do try and make as much of it as I need to in order to achieve my objective (ahem).

These songs are important to me and its important that I do them justice.

Anyway, stop beating around the bush, Steve I hear you say. What are the three songs that are being covered?

Well, the first one is Faith Healer by The Big Dish, from the album Creeping Up On Jesus. I first heard this song in Cyprus in 1987 when it was released and it truly changed my life. I love Steven Lindsay’s work and as a vocalist and as a writer, he has been a huge huge influence on me as his work is honest, methodical and sincere. I did contemplate as to whether it should have been Miss America or Across The Provinces from the later Satellites album instead, but no, Faith Healer was a seminal track for me.

The second one is A Wing & A Prayer by The Mission from the album Children, produced by John Paul Jones. I’ve long been a huge fan of Wayne Hussey as a guitar player and as a writer for decades and I strongly believe that in both capacities he is sadly under-recognised. I cant explain why, but while A Wing & A Prayer is mainly wordplay, there is something about it that I always thought would make a good piano and vocal track, to let the lyrics and the vocal performance really, really shine. Its the one that secretly I hope that someone eventually does on The Voice, LOLZ. Am I the one to be able to do that? Well, I gave it my best shot.

The third one and arguably the most ambitious of all, is Advice For The Young At Heart by Tears For Fears, the closing track of side 1 of the Seeds Of Love album. Roland Orzabal is one of the writers that I have respected very deeply and been heavily inspired by for many, many years now and this track written by him and Nicky Holland is…. well…. musically, its not that tricky, but vocally it is particularly challenging considering Curt Smith spent most of the pre-chorus deep in his falsetto range.

And, despite Roland’s undisputed vocal virtuosity, listening to the demos that he cut at the Townhouse back in 1988/89, it didnt suit him. The final cut had to be done by Curt. It is really challenging to try and do it properly and I’ve had to make some comprimises in how I approached it, so while I have done my best to honour the song, it is a little different to what you might expect.

The song itself, and its lyrical content, has meant so much to me for so many years, especially the lines

“… Love is a promise, love is a souvenir
Once given, never forgotten
Never let it disappear
This could be our last chance
When we gonna make it work?…”

I find it poignant, I find it relevant to what I think and to my “lived experience” as the kids call it these days, to how I feel and believe and I wanted to have a go at it.

So, the three covers tracks for Mondegreen are thus. Hence the concept of a Mondegreen being something you think you’ve heard before, but not in the way you think you have. I think I’ve met that particular threshold, LOLZ.

… but that is going to take some time to finish yet. There is still quite a bit more polishing to do on that EP and I dont really have the time available at the moment to do so.

I am due to retire from the IT industry in less than two months time and also am going to be moving house, so my studio space is going to be very very different to what it has been for the last decade and a half since I started writing. So, I have to concentrate on Monochrome at the moment and push the target completion date out to the autumn at least so that I can at least start that mixing and mastering stage for Mondegreen with a clean slate. That is likely to happen on new equipment as well and will definitely be done in a different recording and mixing space in Warwick instead of in Rugby where I have been since 2017.

Monochrome, as I say, is in quite an advanced state and I am spending a good amount of time during the evenings whenever possible polishing and mixing and eq’ing and compressing and balancing… I’m at the stage now where I’ve completed the stem mixes and the final mixes arent that far off. I’m due to move, as I say, in early August and I am setting a target of the middle of July for Monochrome to be completed and released. So, by that point it has to be as good as I can get it.

In the meantime… I have also become an organic gardener, growing my own produce (which is another equally addictive creative past-time that I never expected to pick up) and I have also become involved with a motion picture/musical project through the US family which I have been doing some recent character/voice acting readings… which may or may not go somewhere.

I hope to have proven myself worthy of a place on this particular project, but that is the decision of the Executive Producer and her team, so we’ll see what happens there; I am also, as I have noted before, coming to the tail end of my 42 year long IT industry career which I am hoping not to have to go back to at any point; we are not going to be under any kind of financial pressure to go back into the workplace, so I am hoping to spend the majority of my retirement as a writer and producer and maybe a voice artist, but time will tell.

In the meantime, my existing flat has to be de-cluttered, I have to work out what I’m taking and what is being junked, I have to hand over my professional responsibilities to my successor at work… there is an awful lot going on and I am at probably one of the busiest points in my life and am likely to remain in that heightened state until probably October.

And I’m going to be 60 in less than 2 months.

I know I’ve not said a lot for quite a while.

…but it doesnt mean I havent been doing anything. Absolutely not, I’ve been as busy as hell.

And hopefully, I will get to keep this blog up to date a lot more than what I have been doing.

I’m back….. Back For Good? I hope so……

Love Me Or Leave Me Alone

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“Grant my last request and just let me hold you
Don’t shrug your shoulders, lay down beside me
Sure I can accept that we’re going nowhere
But one last time let’s go there, lay down beside me”

© Nuitini/Duguid/Benbrook, “Last Request“, from the album “These Streets“, 2006

This is another song that I thought that I had already added to this collection; as with another one relatively recently (specifically Without You and “relatively recently” in this particular case was actually 2017, LOL), this proved not to be the case.

It was actually written during 2015, as were a lot of the others and was initially recorded by my close friend and collaborator David Barnes as a ballad… which was not necessarily how it was originally conceived. His version is a very nice interpretation and I’m honoured that he chose to take the lyrics (as that was all that I had at that point) and put his own music to it

Like a lot of my works, it is based on a dream sequence… and it is based on a relationship that never was with one of the three important women who changed my life between 2011 and 2016 and whose inspiration features very heavily on No Expectations and also to a lesser degree on London Road…

By virtue of most of these songs being written during that same period these same women also feature very heavily as inspiration for songs that are slated to feature on the Monochrome and Mondegreen EP’s. The fact that they didnt make the cut for the London Road and No Expectations albums doesnt mean they were any lesser, per se. Just that they were not thematically right to be included with those works at the time.

The big difference in this case was that the dream sequence was one that was encountered completely separate to getting the music, which came later. Much later, as a matter of fact.

The gist of the dream sequence itself was that I had travelled a long way to be close to this particular person, but unannounced (and before anyone says it, no, not in a stalk-y way, thank you very much) but to be in her proverbial orbit. Anyway (for, as usual, I digress)… in the dream, I was in what could loosely be described as a walled garden which had a bar and a lot of tables and a lot of plants and flowers growing around it. Walking around in this walled garden/bar, I see her at a table with a lot of her friends and our eyes meet, fleetingly but in that second she looked right through me as if I wasnt there. Which is never a good thing when you’re trying to play it way too cool, LOL.

Moments later in the dream sequence, she walks up to me, takes my face in both of her hands and kisses me. I’ve heard women, but never men, describe some particularly intense kisses as being that much that their knees go weak… Well, call it projection, call it wishful thinking/dreaming/whatever, thats what it was like in the dream. It was the most intense kiss I had ever had, real life or otherwise. There was nothing vulgar or overly sexualised about it. It was just that intense that I thought my knees were about to buckle from underneath me. I have no idea at all whether this person who it is about could kiss like that in the first place, but the imagination can play funny tricks on you.

And, as the lyric states, out of nowhere, she said to me, sotto voce… “if you are going to love me… then love me all out… or leave me alone” and then she walks off, back to her friends leaving me standing there wondering what the hell just happened. The message quite clearly being, if you’re going to do this then you have to be absolutely all in or theres no point.

Or to put it in a different way….in todays vernacular, “s*** or get off the pot”.

Also: an explanation of one of the lines in the Middle 8:

“I’ve broken all my addictions, every one except for you“,

This refers to the fact that in 2014, I gave up smoking after 30 years and a whole slew of other things as well after a minor health scare. Most of those things, especially smoking, remain off-limits to this day.

Well, as an aspiring lyricist, in a bit of a purple patch at the time, that was enough… that gave me something to build on, so I just wrote what I’d seen and felt in the dream sequence.

At the time of writing, I did kind of borrow a particular meter to write it around and the notes from the first draft of the lyrics say: “like an Ed Sheerin structure but with a Nutini style vocal/bluesy“… so I had a point of reference.

And in some ways, that has been kind of how it evolved; Conceptually, musically and melodically, it was thought of as Paolo Nutini sings an interpretation of Thinking Out Loud, which at the time was a huge smash around the world.

But the longer the time went on, although I didnt do anything with it, the way I was hearing it in my minds ear did evolve; From Thinking Out Loud, to also including the guitar and piano feel of Eric Clapton’s Old Love and also the three part male harmony backing vocals from Paul Young’s 1980s single, Tomb Of Memories from the follow up album to No Parlez which no one can remember the title of. Especially me, right now LOL.

Fast forward to 2023, because nothing interesting happened with this set of lyrics between those two points, of 2015 and 2023. In the meantime, while I had been working on the tracks for Mondegreen and Monochrome, I had also been reinterpreting a couple of old Silent Edges era songs and once these had got to the point where they needed vocals (more of that in another post though, I’m not going to talk about that here) something about this song forced its way into my conscience and appeared to be telling me I had to do something with it.

So, having learned to trust this instinct, it is something that I have been spending the first week or two of 2023 trying to write/develop proper music for it and have been crafting my interpretation of it and it is starting to emerge from the January fog into the light of day.

… and so far it is nothing like I conceived it to be.

Although, there are elements of the Nutini style about it, more along the lines of Iron Sky than any other of his works, there is also a very different feel brought about by use of a Rhodes piano and a 5 string bass part and a very loose drum track.

So, less of Thinking Out Loud and more Old Love meets Iron Sky. Its a lot less grandiose and much more sparse than a lot of things I’ve tried to write music for and this one I guess is going to lean very heavily on the vocal melody to sell it. Not that I’m making a rod for my own back where the vocals are concerned. Perish the thought…

It wont feature on either of the coming EP’s as it isnt thematically correct for them… but, if it reaches its full maturity, it is likely to feature on another EP some way into the future that conceptually has the title of Abcission… but that is going to be some way away yet.

Love Me Or Leave Me Alone

v1
Maybe there really is no fool
Like me… an old fool
Every time I get back on my feet
I cant wait to fall all over again
But only for you

pre chorus/hook
I seem to have spent a lifetime
A lifetime with my faith in fear
So why is it only you
Who makes my heart leap whenever you’re near?

V2
I dreamed of you in a garden
Surrounded by all your friends… but I could feel you near
You looked at me with those big brown eyes
As if I wasnt even there

pre-chorus/hook
Then out of nowhere
You took my face in your hands
And kissed me like. you’d never kissed no other man
Aint nobody else, only you
Can hold my heart so tight
That I can barely stand

Chorus
(and you said)
Come on and love me (all out, all out, all out, all out, all out)
Or just leave me alone
Why did you fly a thousand miles just to say that you love me
(Are you just scared of being alone?)
So if you’re going to love me, then love me love me all out, all out
Love me or just leave me alone

Middle 8
Now I’ve broken all my addictions
Every one that is except for you
In my mind, our time replays my heart cant erase
And I need to find a way to decide if I still love you…

Chorus

Solo over Chorus

Instrumental pre-chorus hook

End

© Lyrics and Music, Steve McCarthy-Hunt 2023

Leave On An Outwave

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We had no way to see eye to eye
Through all the walls in their mind
These were the pleasures that terrified
We left them behind

© Gary Kemp 1986, from the album ‘Through The Barricades‘

This song is another that is intended for the Mondegreen EP and was written in late 2020.

Unlike a lot of its kith and kin, it was a track that just walked in completely fully formed and unprompted and I have no idea where it came from – as there wasn’t really anything going on in my life at the time which would have given my subconscious any reason to come up with it. All i know is what it sounded like in my minds ear as a production; In this particular case, its vision was not so much of a music video in a vivid dream (like how a lot of songs come to me) but like watching a live performance in a rehearsal room.

With this song, the vocal melody and the structure of the song (and the words as well for that matter) were very clear, even if I didn’t really understand who/whatever sent me the song was getting at; the structure struck me as being very simple and straightforward and in a lot of ways it is very much like the song that is at the head of this page (namely Spandau Ballet’s Cross the Line, which was the opening track on the Through The Barricades album from 1986). The vocal melody was very much a Tony Hadley style “dramatic warble” as he himself has been known to describe it.

With the structure being as simple as it is, it was a very easy song to write lyrically and thematically. Those familiar with Gary Kemp’s writing from that time period will probably recognise the songs roots when they hear it – but as usual, the song no doubt reserves the right to end up sounding like something completely different to its inspiration by the time it is finally completed as a) I’m not Gary Kemp as a writer and b) as a producer, I’m definitely not Gary Langan.

The song is intended for the Mondegreen EP and I hope it will be completed later this year.

And, I’m afraid I don’t really know what an “outwave” is. I think the only way I can make sense of it in the context of the song is like a surfer heading out from the beach into the sea. Not that I’m even remotely familiar with surfing speak or whether such a thing as an outwave exists in surfer parlance. I have tried looking at a different set of words or a different lyric with the same vocal melody and that would end up ripping the entire thing to bits and it wont work like it does now.

So, if Steve Miller can get away with inventing words like pompetus, I’m sure an unknown like me I can get away with an outwave once in a while, LOL. The rest of the lyrics are essentially simple breakup word-play lines. Thats the way they were sent to me by heaven knows who or why and I’m not going to question it; it is what it is [grins]


Leave On An Outwave

V1
It seems that
You’re leaving
We aint got moments to save
We’re breaking
No mistaking
Nothing left I wanna say

{Pre Ch}
Thought we were heading for somewhere
But in the end it was nowhere, baby

v2
The memories
You owed me
Things you promised but you never gave
Just tell me
What you wished for
For love or luck or just to make this go away

{Pre Ch}
Thought we were heading for somewhere
But we ended up nowhere, baby

{Chorus}
(Our paths Crossed) but we leave on an out wave x 2

{Verse & pre ch/instrumental with guitar solo}

{Chorus}
(Our paths Crossed) but we leave on an out wave x 2

v3
I see that
You’re leaving
We’re a calendar that ran out of days
Its a shame, girl
But its your world
And I live to love in another place and another day

{Pre Ch}
What became of our somewhere?
Never thought we’d end up nowhere, darling

{Ch x 2}
(Our paths Crossed) but we leave on an out wave x 2


© Words & Music Steve McCarthy-Hunt 2020

Hate/Bond XXIX

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Am I a God or am I Jesus?
Am I a man or am I a boy?
Do I feel love or just possession?
Do I feel holy or nothing at all?

© Paul Draper, 1997 from the album ‘The Attack Of The Grey Lantern’

This is a song that came along early last year around the time of the first lockdown, completely unprompted, as the best ones usually do. And, as I’ve learned from seeing interviews with other writers (namely Barry Gibb who said that the same happened to him with How Deep Is Your Love and You Win Again), the only bit that I had when this one came along, was just one section of it.

In the case of Hate, it was the Middle 8 and nothing else, which played on a short loop but was distinctive enough to be unforgettable.

But, while it was just the Middle 8, in the same way as Manhattan Lullaby, it was like hearing a fully produced record or seeing part of a fully produced music video in your minds eye. And whereas Manhattan Lullaby‘s vocal melody was a Matt Munro vocal and Let It Go was a Peter Skellern vocal, in this case the vocal was a George Michael one.

Not only that, but the feel of the track seemed to be very James Bond-ish in terms of its arrangement and orchestration; when I woke up and started writing down what I remembered of it, it struck me that George never got the chance to do a Bond theme when he was alive.

Given how big a voice he had and considering how talented a writer he was and how he understood orchestration and arranging, I was somewhat surprised that the opportunity never came his way.

So anyway, after the usual digressing, thats how this song came about.

It is, I must admit, certainly since Manhattan Lullaby anyway, the most musically and vocally ambitious thing I have ever written, certainly in terms of what it needs musically to do it justice and there is a lot for me to learn in order to bring it to life, much less get anything even close to the vision I have for the vocal melody.

I mean, how many others have had a punt at trying to write something that could viably be the intro theme for a Bond film and given it a really serious go? But, having said that, there have been a number of songs that came to me as one thing and ended up on No Expectations or London Road sounding somewhat different. So, while this one is kind of tongue-in-cheek subtitled Bond 29, by the same measure, when it comes to having it down on disk, it may well end up being entirely different. But that is the vision for it that I have right now and thats what I’ll aim for.

Lyrically, with the exception of the Middle 8 which came to me fully formed, the rest of it has been compiled from the reserve of lines that I have from other ideas and also from a couple of stream of consciousness writing sessions that I had between 2017 and 2018; mainly late 2017 when I very nearly found myself being cat-fished (whole other story, most definitely not for this blog).

As it stands at the moment, this song is intended for the Mondegreen EP and will hopefully be produced later this year.

Hate/Bond XXIX

V1
As I hear your footsteps down the dark hall
Deep down I will always wonder if it meant anything at all
When the novelty of beauty fades what becomes of it all?
Is it all too raw to say that your pride will go before your fall?

V2
Too precious to tolerate making a mistake
And being seen as the one to blame
Should learn to ride the mood and just not be afraid
What you deigned to fall for not who I was, but what I wanted to say?

(Middle 8)

Now I hate that you’re mad
And I hate that we are through and I hate the fact
That all the things I once loved about you now make you hate me too.
And all we’ve got left is hate…

V3/{Build up to coda}
And now I watch another guy who was fond of you and turned your head
Dont put anything else into my mind, I haven’t forgiven you yet.
Looking brave on the outside, living your life’s lies
But inside you’re dying with every step

Every single day I try to suppress it, second guess it, Jesus its all such a damn mess, isnt it…

And Id’ forgotten how amazing the tension can be
When someone teases out your vulnerability
Leaves you exposed, pulls you out into the light
Right out of the comfort zone and into the choice of flight over fight

But something’s not right
And you’ve given me proof
You gave away pictures of skin that made you cheaper than the truth
Where did you stay?
When you coming home
Cant help but have the feeling that you’re werent really on your own
I could sense the danger but couldnt help being drawn right in
To a web I never knew I was getting into

CODA:

As I hear your footsteps down the hall
Deep down I know it meant nothing at all
When the novelty of beauty fades nothing becomes of it all
All proof that your pride brought about your fall…

© Words & Music, Steve McCarthy-Hunt, 2021