If memory serves, we debuted this song last January at Theater Wit, after a circus variety show, and I think it was a part of every live set last year. It's a fun one live, with a sort of stealthy groove. We don't have a studio recording of it yet, though, and I'm honestly not sure where such a recording would go. It could be on the expanded Highway Gothic LP—I wrote this more or less while Charlie was mixing and mastering that album—or it could wind up on Posthistoric. Whatever. That's a problem for Future Liz.
Anyway, this is one of those rare triumphs in which you find a home for a stray line. (Cue Sarah McLachlan: "Most stray lines expire, neglected, forgotten, starving...") I originally wrote the line about the room with the pill-bottle smell in 2017, I think, at least a year before the rest of the song—not even in this notebook. By the time I wrote this, I had already tried to shoehorn that line into something else and tried to build a melody around it; neither worked. (There are vestiges of that melody in the do-re-mi-re-do-ti that ends the first and second lines of these verses.) But when the idea for this song arrived, it was almost immediately clear that the pill-bottle room had found its place.
The spark for this one was what turned out to be the chorus:
You say you'll get better
You say you'll get better
I'm bored with this story
Tell me more.
It has evolved into "these stories" but is otherwise intact. The position of those lyrics on the recto page, scrawly and spaced out, is the tell. Now that I've had to start working in different notebooks, I usually write the spark ideas on the verso, to preserve the staff paper for actual music. I'm still not convinced that approach is working. But that's another problem for Future Liz.
Anyway, this is one of those rare triumphs in which you find a home for a stray line. (Cue Sarah McLachlan: "Most stray lines expire, neglected, forgotten, starving...") I originally wrote the line about the room with the pill-bottle smell in 2017, I think, at least a year before the rest of the song—not even in this notebook. By the time I wrote this, I had already tried to shoehorn that line into something else and tried to build a melody around it; neither worked. (There are vestiges of that melody in the do-re-mi-re-do-ti that ends the first and second lines of these verses.) But when the idea for this song arrived, it was almost immediately clear that the pill-bottle room had found its place.
The spark for this one was what turned out to be the chorus:
You say you'll get better
You say you'll get better
I'm bored with this story
Tell me more.
It has evolved into "these stories" but is otherwise intact. The position of those lyrics on the recto page, scrawly and spaced out, is the tell. Now that I've had to start working in different notebooks, I usually write the spark ideas on the verso, to preserve the staff paper for actual music. I'm still not convinced that approach is working. But that's another problem for Future Liz.
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