When you can’t stop writing
I wrote this song around 2018, I wasn’t sleeping too well at the time.
I’m doing great now though, don’t worry
Nietzsche’s parable of ‘The Madman’ from Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (The Gay Science) is the most misunderstood, misinterpreted and misquoted parables of all time. The expression ‘God is dead’ is used as an out of context slogan for edgy atheist teens all over the internet, but the very people who most commonly use this expression are the very people Nietzsche was shouting down in the parable.
The Madman rebukes those who claim atheism but fail to embrace the implications of such a belief. In the modern age, we continue to see the creation of more and more gods, more and more promises of satisfaction, wholeness, completeness.
This video was released on Good Friday, a day set aside in the Christian calendar for mourning the death of God. The story encourages the listener to take seriously the death of God, not with denial, not with despair and not by finding replacements.
For me, the last book of the Bible (Revelation) reads like a diss-track. So do most of Paul’s letters and so do most of the old testament prophets. There is an ancient tradition within Christianity of critiquing the powers of the church. I figured it was time I joined the tradition.
Some of the insults in this were very well researched and others were cheap jabs. I was attempting to cover all denominations and all Christian-based theological thinkers but I’m well aware that I missed some.
If you take offense to any of the lyrics, take a good look at yourself in the mirror, you’re probably reacting to a repressed doubt somewhere inside you. If you didn’t take offense, well I guess I’ll have to try harder next time.
I got Covid at last so I started a series where I would make a whole song including the music video in one day. A couple of friends suggested I did a ‘Prison Blues’ / ‘Jailhouse Rock’ style song so, this happened.
This song is primarily a critique of prosperity gospel however the ideology of ‘Blessing’ pervades through most churches, faiths and political systems. There are two main critiques with Prosperity Gospel which I focus on in this song, although there are many more I could have gone into.
Material critique
By thanking God for our wealth we imply that those who are privileged have received their wealth through a good and fair system of God’s blessing. This can excuse those who have exploited people and used unfair systems to gain their excessive finances. Blessing theology preserves oppressive societal structures, aiding the maintenance of wealth disparity.
Spiritual critique
By thanking God for the wealth which has actually been made through exploitation, we worship a god of oppression, a god who engages in nepotism, a god who stands up for the powerful and does nothing for the poor. Blessing theology is idolatry in the highest, worshipping a false god.
‘speak to me’ was written August 2018 while I was at Soul Survivor. At the time, I felt like all my friends would talk about God “speaking” to them about whatever was happening in their life. I had spent the past 6 months desperately searching for answers to all my questions, both theological and personal. I felt like none of my prayers were being answered, I felt like God was ignoring me and none of the people I spoke to about it could offer me a satisfactory answer.
This song was written as a prayer of questions, doubts and emotions. Many of my thought processes have changed since I wrote this song, but I still love how honest my 17 year old self was when I wrote it.
The name ‘Swings and Roundabouts’ for a song has been in my ideas list for years. After making a random synthy beat, this song finally emerged.
I finished the lyrics with Luke, Max and James over a video call one night when we were bored of discussing where we all appeared on each other’s screens.
The video was shot by Noah, Jamie and Jay, some friends from primary school who I hadn’t seen all together since year 6. This was a hoot to film and must not be taken too seriously.
These lyrics were written in July 2020 but it took until January for the words to find their way into a song and then until October for the song to finally be recorded, produced, filmed, edited and released. And yes, I really did knock a brick wall down with my hands for the video and yes it hurt.
I often talk to my colleagues at work about “hitting my head against a brick wall” when I’m stuck on code and I have spent many hours of unproductive time on local projects which have felt similar.
It’s a feeling I often experience, sometimes without any cause and one that I found myself really wanting to write some poetry about.
Arguably the catchiest of all my songs, also super proud of the lyrics on this one.
‘I don’t know’ explores concepts regarding existentialism, absurdism, apocalypticism and many more philosophical ideas. Some of these lyrics date back to 2018 when I first started noticing existential dread but before I had the word to describe it. It’s weird to think back on that time in my life but it’s also so liberating to have the philosophical terminology which goes towards describing the way I felt.
never went to uni
I wrote this in October 2020 when I was feeling down and lonely whilst a lot of my friends were living their best life at uni. As Covid got worse that winter, I started to realise the uni life was denied to everyone. So this song is for anyone who didn’t go to uni and for anyone who did go to uni but felt like it never quite lived up to their expectations.
Lil bit a country for y’all! This was an enormous amount of fun to write, record, shoot and edit. If you enjoyed the video, whip that like button and ride of into the sunset of subscribership.
YeeeeHaaaaaaa!!!!!
Although this is clearly a bizarre and rather silly song, the lyrics are about taking a different path in life and rejecting the status quo. The idea of radical freedom has played on my mind for many years and is one which I would love to do more work on.
This is one of the first songs I threw together after buying Ableton. It was super foggy out the window and soon what had started as unintelligible sounds turned into words about the weather. I took the opportunity over the next few days to film a music video.
Whist the weather is clearly the running theme of this song, fog provides a disguise for the subject as well as for their path. When we think about it, we all exist in a temporal fog only really being able to remember or predict a small distance into the past and future respectively.
After taking a few months off playing gigs, I was invited to compere and play at an open mic I used to frequent called Guitari Lounge. I wrote this song in one afternoon so I’d have something new to play. Then during the boredom of lockdown, I reworded a few bits as and recorded it as a promo for the online rendition of Guitari Lounge which I continued to compere until we could meet face to face again.