We're up to track four in my series of "song-by-song" posts. This one started in the shower, where there are many good melodies to be found. I think the first couple of lines came first, and that basically set up the structure to the whole song:

"I've been a hater and a lover... somedays neither one or the other"

When you write a first line like that, you basically have to then think of 15 other contrasting things you might have been at some point in your life (saint/sinner, loser/winner, pro/beginner, fatter/thinner). The fact that they need to rhyme just makes the whole process fun.

I'd done a similar thing on Time is right on the previous record, and it's a song structure I quite like.

There were a few pairs of things I've been that didn't make it into the song, my personal favourite being "I've been a rascal and a... non-rascal" (what is the opposite of "Rascal" anyway?)

In songs like this it falls to the chorus to try and state the big idea of the song. It's kind of the "turning point" (for fans of "Mark Watson makes the world substantially better"). Here, I guess the idea is that we can't do anything about the past, and the future is somehow distant. Today is what we have. To take a step beyond who we used to be, we need to make a daily decision. It might not be all that matters, but it does matter.

Terl has a great groove on this song, and Mark played some fantastic hammond. We came to mix it, but it didn't quite feel "finished", so I sat down and laid down a few electric guitar parts using my laptop rig, which I think did the trick. It's a "feel good" track, and I often open shows with it.