WHERE TO STREAM/DOWNLOAD: Bandcamp SoundCloud Spotify/Apple Music/iTunes/Amazon/etc. And available pretty much everywhere else LYRICS: Verse 1: Do you remember all the things you've Said to me? 'Cause I remember everything The air I breathe, the blood I bleed Do you remember all the things I've Said to you? Hope you remember everything I swear on my heart, it's all true Chorus: Gone You're gone The day I prayed I'd never see Gone You're gone And you've left a void in my body Verse 2: Should I even bother hoping For someone? 'Cause you're the only puzzle piece That fits into me, brings me undone Will you ever think of me when You're alone I hope you will, but you don't care As much for me, I should've known Repeat chorus Verse 3: I envisioned all the things that We would be Guess you didn't think of us With all of the light that I see And I was happy despite the roads we'd Travelled through 'Cause in the end it was worth it Aristophanes, worth it for you Repeat chorus Repeat verse 1 Click "read more" for more about the process behind making this song! Gone is track three out of four of my sad boi hours EP, coming right after the first breakup song Sorry. In essence, this EP is a concept album that tells the story of a relationship: first the initial happy times (Wires and Waves Tonight), then the first breakup (Sorry), and now the second and definitive breakup with Gone. Just as with Sorry, Gone was pretty much written in its entirety on a single day while crying on my bed -- wooooo, that's what we call ~excellent mental health~, kids!!! On Wednesday, December 12, 2018, the partner that inspired the other two songs broke up with me for the second time (and right before finals week of my senior year of high school, that absolute bitch). As one would expect from any stereotypical Midwestern emo kid, I pulled out my guitar and wrote this breakup song in order to console myself. SONGWRITING PROCESS/THOUGHTS OF THE LYRICS: While messing around with the guitar part, the first line of the first verse was the very first thing to come into my mind: "Do you remember all the things you've / Said to me?" After being broken up with, I was contemplating all the things that we had talked about in the past -- all the things that made me believe that our relationship was eternal: a very "first high school relationship" type of thing to think. The last line of the chorus and the first half of the second verse are slightly euphemistic. Heehee! The second half of the third verse probably has my favorite lyrics of this entire song: "And I was happy despite the roads we'd / Travelled through / 'Cause in the end it was worth it / Aristophanes, worth it for you." The travelling through roads bit alludes to the fact that this was a long-distance relationship, as was the basis for Wires and Waves Tonight's lyrics. "Aristophanes, worth it for you" at the end of the third verse is a reference to the ancient Greek myth about soulmates. In Plato's Symposium, Aristophanes tells the story that soulmates were once one being with two heads but were separated by Zeus; the two halves that are now modern-day human beings search their entire lives for their soulmate in order to become whole again. As this was my first ever relationship after having spent so many years pining after people who weren't interested in me, I had felt like this ex-partner was my "other half" who I was meant to be with and who was worth all of the pain and unrequited crushes that I had endured. Of course, looking back in retrospect several years and relationships later, I definitely don't think that they were my Aristophanes-esque soulmate. Regardless, that is how I genuinely felt at the time. Another fun little Easter egg in the lyrics of Gone is the song structure. Conventional song structure is "verse 1 - chorus 1 - verse 2 - chorus 2 - bridge - chorus 3." However, I wrote a third verse for this song instead of a bridge. One reason is because creating an entirely new section instead of just using the template of an already-written section takes more brainpower than I had at the time of writing (since I was, y'know, crying after having just been broken up with). Plus, the typical purpose of a bridge is to further progress the story and act as a turning point, climax, revelation, etc. However, in this particular story, there isn't really any sort of growth or development to be had. While the "narrator" (AKA me in this relationship lol) has accepted that this breakup is real, they aren't working to heal, and they aren't trying to learn from their past. They're just ... stuck being sad, wallowing in their own sorrow and self-pity. The ending of the song is a repeat of the first verse but with even sadder singing and guitar-playing. This is a "circle-back ending," and it emphasizes how the narrator is emotionally stuck: not only in this specific relationship, but also in their habitual pattern of falling hard for someone that is just perfect for them, getting their heart broken, and ending up just as sad and lonely as they were in the beginning -- and the cycle repeats. SONGWRITING PROCESS/THOUGHTS OF THE MUSIC: Just as I did with Sorry, I instinctively wrote this song in the reliable key of E minor using all those guitar chords that I am very familiar with: Em7, Dsus4/F#, Cadd9, and G. However, when I came up with the idea of making an EP out of the songs that came of this relationship, I didn't want there to be two songs in the same key in a row. So, for this song, I ended up putting a capo on the first fret to change it from the key of E minor to the key of F minor. While Sorry and Gone are both about being broken up with by the same person, the two songs have two very different ~vibes~. In contrast to Sorry, which is the first breakup and much more emotionally tumultuous, Gone is the second and final breakup and is much more subdued and melancholy. In the former, the narrator is much more agitated, almost panicking from being blindsided with this breakup. In juxtaposition, the tone in Gone is much more introspectively mournful. Yes, the narrator is still heartbroken, but this time around, they have accepted that the partner/relationship is truly gone; no amount of keening, begging, or (frankly unearned) apology will change that. This is why Sorry has intense musical energy with full instrumentation, while Gone has very minimal instrumentation. I only used a single, simple acoustic guitar track and very little vocal harmony for Gone. I hope you enjoyed this little peek into my song-making process for Gone. As a songwriter, I personally really enjoy learning about how other songwriters/musicians/etc. create a song from concept to final track, so I hope this was interesting or educational for you! You can check out the rest of my "story behind the song" posts on this blog, and don't forget to stream sad boi hours EP! Blog posts for sad boi hours EP:
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mae-mae hanI'm the singer-songwriter and musician behind this site (and almost everything of my music). I hope you enjoy both my songs and this blog! latest videoarchives
April 2021
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