Album

Only You And I Know…

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“Whenever I think I know you better
Better than I know myself
Ooh, I open up and give you everything
Then you say, “Okay, what else?”
And when I run away, you always cry
You always overreact
But I don’t know if you know how you really feel
But you better know before I get back…”

© Collins/Stuermer, from the album “No Jacket Required”, 1985

Well, this one just walked in pretty much fully formed and was gestated from some spare lines that I figured that I wanted to use that had managed to avoid the sift so far. There were a few things that prompted it really, some of it from seeing a couple of very old (well, nearly 40 years old now) videos on YouTube, one of them being REM’s Everybody Hurts, with some of the lines being inspired by some of the subtitles in the video. It is one of the most devastating videos I’ve ever seen and one of only three that I have ever seen where I have got what the video director was trying to say immediately. The main other one being Alanis Morissette‘s ThankU, but there are others.

Anyway. Before I start diversifying too much, this one has kinda crept in quite late and so long as the music manages to meet the spec, should be able to see its way on to Time Demands, probably smack bang in the middle of the listing. I have been giving some thought to how the album should run, but I’ll come to that in future updates.

The subject matter is one that was prompted by a line in a song now that I cant even remember – where the premis is that a writer’s songs are full of pointers and what are effectively open secrets about the person that they’re written about. I mean, Patti Boyd can write an encyclopaedia on the ones that have been written about her by Eric Clapton, Wayne Hussey has had a few as well from Children and Gods Own Medicine that were about the same particular muse, the mother of his daughter… Jimmy Webb most famously did, most eloquently and uniquely with McArthur Park as well… and where Steve Hogarth is concerned, fuggedaboutit….. Neverland, Somewhere Else, Games In Germany… his muses whether they be women that he has been close to, like his first wife or a good friend of his from his childhood in Doncaster who joined the army, are never far from the surface.

And I guess as well, going back over the three albums I’ve been writing, I’ve not hidden where the muses have inspired me either. And I guess, this song is a way of saying, if you hear this song and listen to it carefully, you’ll recognise bits of us in it, secrets that only you and I will be aware of. Everyone else will sing along but will be completely oblivious… The first verse referring to close time together where a couple will recognise intimate moments by a seashore and the second verse descends to tongue in cheek wordplay, where it refers to a suitcase full of the wrong clothes and straws to break a camels back, because its the only thing he knows how to do, is to push her to her limits.

There are some slightly odd lines in there. No more arguing in the house of God, funnily enough came from a Steve Hogarth Christmas gig in Oxford in 2021 when he had to tell someone to wind her neck in as she was prattling away when he was trying to speak to the audience, which I know he tries not to do…Tell the shivers to subside was heard in a film, dont ask me which one though, but I thought that is brilliant, I’m having that... stream the songs of the angels through the blandness… well, that one is pretty self explanatory really. Given how much bland noise there is these days out there on the likes of Spotify and others, when we hear what are the sounds of angels, or great songs that we love like diamonds amongst the coal, we should sing them louder to make sure everyone hears them.

Music-wise, all up in the air at the moment, although something is telling me Tears For Fears “Seeds Of Love” era… trying to have polished high production values, but its almost like there is bits of Neil Finn-isms in there as well, like Locked Out from Together Alone. I guess if I can pitch a metaphorical lyrical tent somewhere between Neil Finn and Roland Orzabal, I should be happy.

Lets see how it turns out… I’m in the process of building all the songs at the moment and it is likely to take some time to bring these things into a recognisable state but things are quite promising at present…

Only You And I Know…

Verse 1
My songs all contain secrets about you In every line,
the look in your eye or the warmth of your hand
The sea between your toes, barefoot in the sand
 
Chorus
And only you and I know, the truth in the songs and the lines
A seed of love sown with tears, flowers in the spring with joy
And only you and I know, You’ll hear your name in this song all the time
Only you and I know what it is all about, theres no reason for us to be so coy
 
Verse 2
My heart’s been dragged around like a suitcase
Filled with all the wrong clothes
Its full of the straws to break your camel’s back
In the only way that I know (and how..)…
 
Chorus
And only you and I know, the truth in the songs and the lines
A seed of love sown with tears, flowers in the spring with joy
And only you and I know, You’ll hear your name in this song all the time
Only you and I know what it is all about, theres no reason for us to be so coy
 
Middle 8:
No more arguing in the house of god,
No more seeking the truth in wine
An unfinished jigsaw on the kitchen table
Shouldnt be the story of our lives
Tell those shivers to subside,
Scream out loud to be let in from the cold
Stream the songs of angels through the sea of the blandness
Did we really say goodbye thinking we’d never get old?
Chorus x 2 to fade

© Music and Lyrics, Steve McCarthy-Hunt 2025

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

Time Demands

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“…Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught, or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say…”

© Lyrics by Roger Waters, 1973 from the album “Dark Side Of The Moon”

Another new song, this time the title track from the forthcoming album of the same name.

This one again came from the same collection of lines and ideas that have been sitting in an A4 folder and a number of notebooks over the last few years. And they’ve been collected from all over the place and the more observant of you will notice a pretty glaring Joni Mitchell one in here as well… one of my favourite tracks of hers, a heartbreakingly beautiful song called River. Its not theft (well not exactly, more of a tip of the chapeau, thats my story and I’m sticking to it, LOLZ) Very seasonal as well. And theres a line that is half borrowed as well from the late Glenn Frey, right towards the end.

The thrust of it, is as per the rest of the album; an exercise on growing older and watching the world changing around you. It also questions whether any of us put down roots on this particular journey called life, either in a physical place or whether we continue to keep the same values through our lives (Do you know where you stand/can you still stand where you stand/Will you now stand where you want to stand?)

And through the series of questions and challenges, it comes to the conclusion: There is no such thing as the perfect path. Even in living in the moment (such as like wot I try to do), events of now very quickly become yesterdays news – hence the chip paper reference, going back to the 1970s where British Chip shops used to wrap their portions in newspaper until they realised it contained lead… The “Did You Get What You Wanted? Is a Deal A Deal” line comes from Jimmy Webb’s autobiography where he said that what he wished for was to be a writer and thats what he got and he later realised that what he had asked the universe for came at a price, but because he did a deal with the universe, whatever she asked for as the price of entry, he was honour bound to pay it. Because a Deal Is A Deal.

So, what exactly does Time Demand? It demands, not to put too fine a point on it that you get your shit together to make the most of life while you have it. Many are denied the opportunity to get to the age you and I have reached, by the universe’s unseen hand at work, it is a privilege to grow old. Dont be afraid of the outside world, embrace it, be part of it to your fullest. Take control of your life as much as you can. Find that crucible for your dreams. Its all your journey now. Dont do it for someone else. Do it for you.

Again there is the first draft/lyrics only caveat at this stage. Not sure it is going to go in quite the Floyd-y direction that this post may intimate. Just so I set your expectations accordingly!

Time Demands

Getting to grow old is a blessing
Denied to so many by an unseen hand
Desire as you knew it may have walked out of your heart
But it remains in your mind
As you work out your new place in this tough and changed land
Do you know where you stand?

You’re splashing around in puddles of tears
Some frozen hard after all this time
If you dont slip over, maybe you can skate away
And put behind you all of those old fears
Can you still stand where you stand?

You should never be scared of the outside world
You can find peace by a lake under the moon
Dont worry about all those old bad ideas
They’ll be miles behind you and over very soon

Dont you worry about those old regrets
About what you didnt get to do
Take control of your own life now
Its all down to you, now
Too much too little, its all so scary
How do you find any middle ground?
Will you now stand where you want to stand?

The latest post is now yesterdays news
Yesterdays headlines now the chip paper they can no longer use
Did you get what you wanted, was a deal a deal?
Were you chasing your feelings not knowing if they were real?

You were meant to find a forge, for all of your dreams
And its time to work out now, if it is all what it seems

(Its your journey now…)

© Lyrics by Steve McCarthy-Hunt, 2025

Silent Time

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“Somewhere down the road, you’re gonna find a place
It seems so far, but it never is
You won’t need to stay, but you might lose your strength
On the way

Sometimes you may feel you’re the only one
Cause all the things you thought were safe, now they’re gone
But you won’t be alone, I’ll be here to carry you along
Watching you ’til all your work is done”

© Phil Collins (1989), from the album “But Seriously…”

This one has probably had four gestations in its lifetime. There is also a version of it that is on the Echos Of Unmade Miles album and is on this site as Unspoken Words.

Basically it goes back to an old conversation that my best friend and closest collaborator, Robert Pearce, where he had said that as a young father that the one thing that worried him was the kind of world that he was going to leave for his son and whether he could do anything about it to mitigate how the world was changing, or words to that effect. I lazily sat on the floor with an A4 pad and dashed off a page of lyrics and said “there you go, try that for size”, it just flooded out right there and then… and did I take a copy of it?

Can I remember even a single solitary syllable of it?

NOPE!

The second iteration of it was Unspoken Words, which was also something that went through evolutions to get where it is and then sat in an A4 ring binder for a decade before I threw it into the fiery goblet called Suno to see what would get spat out… and I was quite happy with the results of what it generated for those lyrics.

There was though, always another version of it which had another way of looking at it at its heart; and that was the yin and yang of for every good thing that he could/would leave to his son, society would leave something that would be darker and less useful to him. For everything good, there is a bad.

And the kicker being, everything that is bad, is something that we, he and I, and all those around us, are guilty of not only propagating, but also perpetuating to prop up our current lives and the sting of hypocrisy that goes with it, like lemon juice in a paper cut… and that was the version that I’ve sought to bring to life now.

It did poke its head above the duvet briefly at a BASCA Songwriting Retreat at Monnow Valley Studios in 2015, when three of us were kicking around the idea that later became This Time, which was subsequently cut by me on the London Road album… but nothing came of it. Too complicated at the time and (co-writers) Nikki and Alan werent feeling it either, LOLZ.

Obviously, at this stage where its just lyrics, I have no idea how or if it is going to work the way it was conceived. But, I’d like to see it do great things, much as if it were a child of mine that I never had… despite its future being weighed down by all the things I should have done and never did.

Talk about Art Imitating Life….

Oh and just for clarity… I dont (normally anyway) write protest songs (although there have been two which could be called that – This Time and Revolution In The Rain) – and Im firmly of the belief that you dont have to cancel out the rest of real modern life and go along with the greenwashing insanity to look after the planet that you live on. Living in harmony with nature does not mean this insane, heavily politicised zero carbon BS.

Silent Time

Standing on a shoreline
Many miles away from home
Silent times alone with my children
Wondering about what my generation has done

For every fish caught from a holiday pier in the summer
More and more plastic bags in the sea
For every beach that our family has walked upon
There is litter and sewage as far as the eye can see
Feeling so free, swimming in the sea, playing in the surf
Wondering where all the fish stocks have gone
Purse seine’d from the deep where there was never enough

For every forest with its huge canopies
There are miles and miles of urban sprawl
Where there were once habitats for wildlife
Logging and sawmills have seen to that all
My memories of green and rolling hills
Keep fading into the past
Scars in the soil of rails and roads that are carved into the land…

Fo every sight of the stars and the moon
Space junk and drones fill the skies
Where the birds were once soaring and singing
More and more buildings are raised ever more high
The breath of pure nature is replaced by the smoke and smog
And the beautiful sound of nature and silence
Is shattered by noise and the electronic fog…

Take a look at the lights, drowning out the night
I tried hard to make my world good, but for your future, its not right
I took the world my father showed to me
The beautiful world that he had known
And its time for us to hand it to your generation
Only now can we see what the hell we have done…

If you take one lesson from us, my son
For the breaking world that we leave in your care
Dont look after it so you can be righteous
Do it because it is still there….

© Lyrics Steve McCarthy-Hunt 2025

Say Nothing

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“Our memories, well, they can be inviting
But some are altogether mighty frightening
As we die, both you and I
With my head in my hands, I sit and cry…”

© Eric & Gwen Stefani, 1997 from the album “Tragic Kingdom”

Next up, from the forthcoming album, Time Demands... another one, a bit shorter this time, again in a bit of a virgin state as of this precise moment in time; just lyrics. I dont really have any notion yet what direction it is going to go in…. the metaphorical chicken bones that I’m throwing around the floor are suggesting possibly TalkTalk or a similar late 80s/early 90’s feel. Too early to say though. It will go where it will.

So what is it about? Its that part of coming out of a relationship that neither of you really wanted to come out of but felt that not only did you have no choice, but as soon as you made the decision, you knew you’d made the wrong choice. And sometimes, its better to just say nothing than say the wrong things and only make what was once, however briefly beautiful, tarnished and broken and worse as a result.

Or, to use a shorter phrase, “Some things are better left unsaid”.

Its about trying to get on with your life without getting bogged down with the past and trying to constantly go back over the slate of memories thinking and rethinking “…. ah but what if…. what if so-and-so hadnt been there when… I would have then have…” and the such like. The past has gone. Nothing can change it, and re-writing it does no one any favours, because the rewrite is a lie, no matter what prism you think you’re looking at it through. The past is still the same and is cast in stone from the moment that it happened.

Its not a case of Only The Victorious Get To Write History. Its perfectly ok to be able to see history objectively and be comfortable acknowledging if you have failed.

There is no dishonour in failure.. only in not having tried at all.

Say Nothing

Searching for your name
Through contacts and photographs
Wasnt there somewhere else where I needed to be?
Picking up all the shattered pieces
I’ve never ever known,
Never known a heart to feel so damn heavy.

Trying to find my way out of the dark
Can someone please tell me what Im supposed to have missed?
Is this the point I watch you leaving the park
Have you already forgotten the hope of love that was in my kiss?

Please… just say nothing
You dont need to say anything at all
The only person who could ever have helped me
Is the one who couldnt stand to stay and watch me fall

My little broken princess, its ok to be afraid
There is a time to heal from all these choices we have made
Its a road thats less travelled, its a window less viewed
So many ways to say I love you, but we only knew but a few

I try hard not to let you walk across my mind
I spent far too much time, trying to read between you and all the lines
You can drink til you dont remember and then cry yourself to sleep
But when you wake up with your feet over the edge
remember the promises that you alone swore that you’d keep…

© Lyrics Steve McCarthy-Hunt 2025

The Land Of The Low White Sun

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“…Today I dreamed
Of friends I had before
And I wonder why
The ones who care don’t call anymore
My feelings hurt
But you know I overcome the pain
And I’m stronger now
There can’t be a fire unless there’s a flame…”

© Seal, 1994 from the album “Seal”

Third new song uploaded for the day on a cold, foggy Warwickshire night, from the forthcoming album Time Demands. As per the previous posts, this one is lyrics only and first draft at the moment. No music exists yet.

I have to admit, I have no musical preconceptions for this particular track, at the moment, I have absolutely no idea what direction it is going to take me in. Ahem, pardon me. What direction it is going to go in, dragging me after it, more accurately.

Its is like a lot of the other songs, based on a collection of lines, observations and thoughts that have been percolating for the last decade and have a broad number of different sources where I first heard them and thought “I’m keeping that, that’ll come in useful…” It is definitely autobiographical, about childhood, fleeting observations and nuggets of wisdom found amongst the fools gold of life (bloody hell thats good, I’m not giving that one away, LOLZ). In some cases I’ve had these lines for a long long time and not had the opportunity to use them and some of them have snuck their way in here and finally found their place.

It also cements the lesson that life has taught me that life isn’t something that just happens to you, you make a number of choices that then open up a number of forks in the road of life in front of you which then give you more choices and each one of those leads off in different directions… well, thats my philosophy anyway.

Just for the shits and giggles… where did the title come from? Actually, it came from a podcast where I saw it was going to be an article of discussion that night. I’m not avoiding a copyright sniff on where the title came from, but thats where it first struck me. Also, I can absolutely confirm that its got absolutely nothing to do with either Taiwanese or Chinese or Japanese flags or political parties, or necessarily the phenomenon of the northern latitudes where the sun always remains low in the sky for a whole day and doesnt really rise or set… The relevance of it is more the latter, where the light is always low and maybe blinding you to what may be right in front of you. It is a line from a notepad and its one that I liked and it for the moment at least, it fits. Like other works in the catalogue, it may change, but when I was looking for titles for these songs, this was the one that seems to fit and for now at least, it will stay.

The lines themselves; very much about where I grew up in Coventry and about the people whose company I found myself in during my late teens and early 20’s. Im particularly happy with the last verse, particularly the references to factories, football grounds, paper planes and toys and unemployed boys; Coventry was quite grim in the late 1970s and early 1980s as it was changing from being an industrial post-war town trying to rebuild itself after the war and the political changes from the late 1960s through to the 1980s put a very different slant on that; I was born less than a mile from Coventry City Football Club’s old Highfield Road stadium and that was a big part of my childhood; so were a lot of the factories that family members and friends families were dependent on for their livelihoods at the time, all pretty much now gone as the city changed and evolved. Unemployed boys, well, there was certainly tens of thousands of them around at the time, all looking for something, maybe something that some of them never found, or if they did find it, they didnt find it in Coventry….

As it says, you connect with what works for you. What is meant for you will not pass you by. But by the same token, its a cautionary tale if you keep swimming after something that you figure you have to chase, even if it may not really be what you want any more… after all, no one wants to be in deep water on their own thinking what the hell do I do now….?

I’m very happy with its current form and I’m very much looking forward to where it may take me during its gestation period.

The Land Of The Low White Sun

This is the path you had put yourself on
Its a little late in the day to ask yourself: Was it wrong?
Back then everyone told you; it’ll probably be OK.
Then they went ahead and did the opposite thing anyway…

Other people have already decided who I am
Reputations change pretty fast these days
Nobody gives a damn
So here I am sitting here all tangled up in my words
Shards from a shattered looking glass
looking like feathers from scattered birds

We all looked towards those we thought were the wise ones
And from the company we kept; the answers there came none
And in the time it took to sleep
In the land of the low white sun
We look back to the way it never was
And we weave our ideas into the fabrics of our times…

It all gets lost, so deep amongst all the noise
A childhood full of games, paper planes and toys
Of factories and football grounds
And unemployed boys
You connect with what works for you
I guess its easy to say

Theres no point swimming after a ship that has left you behind
Deep out int he water drowning on your own
While the old men keep on dreaming their dreams
And trying to find their way home…

© Lyrics by Steve McCarthy-Hunt 2025

Raindrops And Razorblades

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“My life is a house
You crawl through the window
Slip across the floor and into the reception room
You enter the place of endless persuasion
Like a knock on the door when there is ten or more things to do…”

© Neil Finn, 1993 from the album “Together Alone”

Second new song added in 24 hours, from the intended Time Demands album. Again, the caveat is that it is a first draft and may change by the time it hits the hard drives for real and the music has yet to be composed too. My initial feelings about the music is that it is likely to be quite proggy, but again… it may decide to go off in a completely different direction. Thats the joy of songwriting, I find.

There have been a lot of the songs that were originally written as part of the 2014-2017 Purple Patch which ended up in a very different place, whether that was Suno-assisted or not. This is no different.

Anyway. Digressing and all that.

The lyrics are a combination of a lot of lines that were written/seized upon during the 2017-2019/2020 period. Some have been used as, I guess the equivalent of mortar to pin other lines together, so there is a bit of wordplay in there, but there is actually a cogent theme running through the song.

And that theme is this: No one elses life is yours to save, only your own. You cannot save people from themselves.

Around that is a series of observations of how I see my life looking back at some of the things that happened and how I reacted; I dont really think I criticise the decisions that I made, just that they happened. It was I guess, more a case of observing the world around me and how mad it was at times, particularly lines like “Everybody always seems to be somewhere else, always chasing a new kind of high” and “spent my youth being forced to decide between prejudice and passion and choosing a side”. Obviously now the wisdom of age tells me that I didnt have to choose a side at all, all I had to do was plot my own path. I didnt have to have a prejudice or a pre-determined point of view about anything, I just had to watch, listen and learn. I’m also quite proud of the “I’ve tried catching lightning in a bottle, it didnt need to be mine” line; the concept of being around people who you figure make you look good, you’re in their reflected glory, you figure that by being in their company, that you get some of that glow to make you feel better about yourself.

Obviously, I learned that was a fallacy in fairly short order, but it still took time to learn and as the old saying goes, the Universe Keeps Sending You The Same Lesson Until You Learn It. Tick. Been there done that, bought the T-shirt.

Most of the lines relate to yes, the same three muses that have been part of my life and shaped it. It also contains a Bridge/Middle 8 that refers to my current partner (“you let in the sunshine and led me out of the night”).

It is, ultimately about life in a snapshot, I guess. Where is the town of False Dreams? Oh it could be a number of places. It could be London. It could be Aylesbury (its most likely to be Aylesbury, in fairness, LOL), it could be a market town in Warwickshire. It could be a number of places. Could even be Peterhead in Scotland, where I spent a lot of my youth.

I am quite comfortable with the direction that it is going in and I’m quietly, reservedly confident that it will turn out good. I’m looking forward to the musical journey that I’m going to go on until its finished.

Oh and why Raindrops And Razorblades? Well, if it is driving, fierce, horizontal rain in real inclement weather, especially in Winter, that rain stings when it hits you in the face. Trust me, I know, LOL. Plus, I’m quite happy with the rhythmic alliteration of it and it almost has a Wayne Hussey-like thing to it, it strikes me as the kind of song title he would have come up with in his time. And given that Mr Huss is an influence of mine (although you have to dig pretty deep these days to find it, LOLZ), I am definitely influenced by him as a musician and a writer.

Raindrops and Razorblades

Raindrops fall like razorblades

Her life wasnt mine to save

Just hold me til my soul melts inside…

In a town of false dreams
Streets of fear that didnt come true
Theres nothing else to find out about me
That you dont already know

I tried catching lightning in a bottle
It didnt even need to be mine
Everybody always seems to be somewhere else
All chasing a new kind of high
None of us know how long the ride will last, not for ever more
When the novelty of beauty finally fades
All of these ambitions will be left at the door…

Its like you walked into the house of my mind
And turned on every one of the lights
You let in all the sunshine and led me out of the night
I didnt know if I would make it out alive
and if I’d make it all right…

We left a little piece of me in everywhere I’ve been
All sixes and sevens and eights and elevens
Trying to tell all of those shivers to subside
Preaching to the wind and trying to hold back the tide

A million flashbulbs of sun on the ocean
And you fell through my fingers like a ring in a sand-dune
Spent my youth being forced to decide
Between prejudice and passion and choosing a side
I could stop and look around me and the consequences roll on
Cant try and turn it around if it all turns out to be wrong…

© Lyrics Steve McCarthy-Hunt 2025

The Next Chapter

/ stevehunt18 / Leave a comment

Pretty much a month has passed since my last update and things are indeed moving forward. While Mondegreen is no more, the projects that I referred to in my last update are indeed starting to roll forward.

The Echo Of Unmade Miles is, in its rawest form already out there on Bandcamp, but is going to be reviewed, re-recorded and I have decided to add my own value to it as opposed to it being entirely Suno-based, relying only on my lyric writing as my contribution.

The tracks that are going to be used on the album are: Every Time I See Her; All I Needed Was You; Introspection; Deep Deep Blue; Epitaph; Strange Girl; Touch; Unspoken Words; All That You Wanted; Song For Jayne; Burning Bridges and lastly Love Me Or Leave Me Alone. 12 songs. I was originally thinking of making it a double album but in all honesty, I think these 12 are the strongest at the moment and while Suno has done an exceptional job and taking them from raw lyrics to viable songs that I actually like listening to (objectively at that), there are some things about it which are not quite right and need something else.

Whether it be a change to a vocal, or whether its the somewhat easily identifiable (some might say predictable) FM friendly US guitar tone, as if every single guitarist is either Willie Nelson, or an 80’s hair metal pointy headstocked speed demon plugged into a mountain of Mesa Engineering 4 x 12’s… not exactly the kind of tone I had in mind, so I have taken the liberty of taking a range of stems from the (I nearly said recordings, but managed to stop myself!) Suno generated tracks and use them as a demo basis and overdub them as best I can.

The intention will obviously be to use the full range of vst tools that I have available to me which also in the now installed Cubase 15, a Yamaha provided AI voice generation engine but also a long awaited IK Multimedia tool called Re-Sing, which can generate a number of different male or female vocal perfomers, based on what it has “ethically” trained its product on **Tangential digression coming up** (yeah, ok whatever. How the music business, with its track record can sit there with a straight face, howling about “ethics” when they’re even less ethical than modern day politics or medicine is beyond laughable).

But I digress. It is a legit tool, which is locally installed and allows me to be able to at least provide/generate vocals of the correct gender for the tracks I have without relying on Suno’s product. It is being received quite positively by the industry at the moment and I dare say that anyone who listens to music may start to recognise some of the preset voices, in the same way that it was possible in the late 1980s to spot the Yamaha DX7 bass sound, the Roland D50 Fantasia preset, the Korg M1 piano sounds and the famously described “asthmatic sheep being kicked in the guts” Simmons SDS series drums of the time a mile off. Obviously, it would be preferable to make the sounds less… predictable.

For all my talents, one of them that is conspicuous by its absence is the ability to sound like a woman when I sing. I’m not Roland Orzabal, with his legendary falsetto and head voice, borne of years of opera training before forming his band. Some of these songs do sound very good being performed with a female voice (All That You Wanted, All I Needed Was You and the two big cinematic epics, Song For Jayne and Epitaph) and I will endeavour to deliver them with the best vocal that I can, especially given that I do not have the financial depth or contacts to be able to find and retain sessioners to the same standard that will be required. Some may not like it and will grumble very loudly about how AI of any flavour is akin to medieval heresy, calling for anyone who may use it or worse still, provide the service for users, to be treated like witches to be burned at the stake. I dont buy into that hysterical wailing which, lets face it, is seen whenever there is a technological leap in the industry, whether it be multitrack tape, ProTools, Synthesisers, the Fairlight, the LinnDrum, et al. I find it extremely tiresome. It is a tool of the ages and at my time of life and given that all of these songs sat in a folder for a decade doing nothing, I have no concerns whatsoever about using the technology available to me to make these songs every bit as I could be. Given the recent additions of Cubase 15 and the Mac Studio M1 Ultra, I’m probably in the best place I’ve been in order to produce these works.

So the current stage of development that Echo Of Unmade Miles is at; the stems have been downloaded, the Cubase projects have been opened in their templates and I’m hoping to make a start on selecting the stems and working out what is going to be kept and what is going to be re-recorded or enhanced over the coming two months or so. There is already a cover that I’m happy with and barring minor amendments, it’ll be pretty much ready to go when it is complete, which I hope will be in the spring sometime, depending on how much use I make of studio time over the winter, what with being retired now from the daily grind…

Time Demands on the other hand… well, I had been scouring my journals and notebooks for some time for lyrical ideas; there hadnt really been anything that was a leftover from a previous project that didnt make the cut, it was having to be freshly written and constructed. That was also the right thing to do thematically as well, because as I’ve alluded to, the point/theme behind Time Demands is one that has only really become clear in the last 6 months or so; the theme is that of age and the wisdom that is meant to come with it and as we enter our autumn years, what we are going to do with all this stuff that we’ve learned and crammed our minds with and how we’ve got to this point and we then think “….ok…. so whats next? What now?” No longer is the material tied together by threads of abandonment and the writing has changed accordingly to reflect that. The lines and imagery that have been the framework that the tracks have been built on so far, I have had for between “months”, “days” and “years” in some cases.

Songs that at the moment are just first draft lyrics, but that I hope to form the album with are: Lives of Glass, Parallel Lives, Where Are My Heroes Now?, Silent Time, Land Of The Low White Sun, Raindrops and Razorblades, Say Nothing and lastly the title track, Time Demands.

The only one of them that can claim any kind of lineage at all is Where Are My Heroes Now?… this was a concept that was tackled on the 2016 BASCA Songwriting Camp at the now defunct Monnow Valley Studios in the beautiful county of Monmouthshire (which for me ended up being more of a Production Retreat than a Songwriting Retreat, but thats another story)… there was a track produced or I should say more accurately, half produced that two of the three writers I was working with that day (to another brief by the legend that is Rita Campbell) which they both took away and used… and by virtue of being in the room at the time and lobbing in the occasional breadcrumb to the discussion, I ended up with a 30% share in it… and it was actually the song that got me my first PRS royalty cheque when it was included in a couple of Open Mic sessions by its lead composer in deepest darkest Leicestershire about 8 years ago… so it is more important to my history than I would ordinarily credit, it allowed me to be able to call myself (with some scant justification…) a professional songwriter…

I didnt follow up on it though, although I liked the idea; it was particularly pertinent as 2016 was the year when it seemed like half the legends of the music industry were dying every week which was most disconcerting, but I’ll talk more about that in the story of the song itself in another post.

The storyboard behind it is one that I have still used, but the lyrics this time are completely mine and the music will be original as well. Suno was used as a sounding board for meter and lyrical structure for the track, but nothing else and I dont anticipate it getting a look in on the finished product if I can help it…

So, as it stands at the moment, these lyrics, for everything really, are at the first draft stage. I will look to add them to the catalogue over the coming days and explain how they came about and where I see them going.

There is also the matter of the other tracks mentioned before about the Chasing A Rainbow soundtrack which can be worked on, plus a small number of Silent Edges/Alter Zero songs which need to be done for completeness as one last EP, but I must prioritize Time Demands and Echoes for now. If I can get this work done by summer of next year, I’ll be very happy.

So, once this week is done, I’m hoping to start making very real progress in making these works real and making the most of the time to be creative. This is, after all, what I retired to be able to do more of.

I’ll do my very best to keep you all updated over the coming weeks with the songs as they evolve and with the album projects as they come to life.

“Hang On Lads…. change of plan…”

/ stevehunt18 / 7 Comments

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.

KOAS Album Release Day – Monochrome

/ stevehunt18 / Leave a comment

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.