“At the end of the recording sessions, it became plain that we still needed one song. I was ready to adapt and add another relic, but Mark pushed me to write a new one. I pushed back. I had not written a song since 1991, and I actually had convinced myself that any inspiration I used to have disappeared into 30 years of middle aged suburbia. But I promised to try. What came out was this. It was the one song that did not have decades of baggage attached to it so I wasn’t even sure what I wanted it to sound like. But that’s why you have a producer. What Mark did with this song blew me away – I had never really heard a pop song that was carried almost entirely by horns. I’m pretty proud of it.”
Dreams
They turn brown
They fall down
Status quo
Truth
The rule I
Once lived by
Long ago
Free
The long haul
The big brawl
Over time
Sin
The wrong word
Have you heard
The paradigm?
But I
I can make you cry
Never ask you why
Love you til you die
And we
Know the place to begin
Burrow under the skin
Instead we are lost, lost in The Sin
Love
My guard’s down
You’ve come ‘round
Skin of teeth
Grief
The pain shows
As life flows
Underneath
Time
We’re lonely
If only
For awhile
Strength
The last stand
The past can
Make you smile
CHORUS
The Sinner smiles at nothing
And sings of his pain and the cost of his deeds
But he can only play that song until he can feel his fingers bleed
Hope is
The thing with feathers
That perches in your soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops at all
War
The silence
The violence
Fills the sky
Peace
Angelic
A relic
Of days gone by
Skin
So pretty
A pity
We can’t push past
Faith
We tried it
Divided
Cannot last
But I
I can make you cry
Never ask you why
Love you til you die
And we
Know the place we can start
Burrow under the heart
Instead we are lost, as we fall apart
CHORUS
Here
Where we are
Where we scar
Let it be
Now
Where Hope lies
Where Sin dies
Set them free
Miles
We’ve both run
We’ve gained none
Still we win
Hope
Retrieve it
Don’t leave it
With your sin
Believe it
Don’t leave it
With your sin
©2023 Shael Risman