OK, here's the first in my "Unsung" series, in which I will post lyrics for unrecorded songs. And what better way to kick things off than with what is quite possibly the most depressing song I've ever written? :D

"Not Even God" came out of a writing session for FAWM 2007 with my friend Rob (who can be heard playing on my songs "Learning To Let Go", "To The Bone" and "In The Dark", the last of which he also co-wrote). We began with high hopes, thinking that we might be able to write and record not only one, but two songs-- one to count towards his FAWM effort, and one to count towards mine.

It didn't really work out that way. The first (and only) idea we had for a song was to write something from the point of view of someone whose entire world had just changed, or was about to change, due to some potentially globally cataclysmic event. Exactly what that event was-- a nuclear holocaust, a natural disaster of unprecedented proportions, an alien invasion-- was incidental to the song and therefore did not necessarily have to be identified. What was important, as far as the song was concerned, was what might be going through the head of someone in that position.

Neither Rob nor myself have had much experience trying to write with someone else, so we decided that each of us would try to write a separate set of lyrics, and see if we could blend parts of them together afterwards. Well, it soon became apparent that that wasn't going to work either, as we were both writing with different tunes and rhythms in our heads. By that time, each of us felt that we might be on to something, and didn't particularly want to toss out what we'd written, so they became two entirely different songs, centered around a common theme.

My song ended up being told from the perspective of a parent who is putting their child to bed for what they know might be the last time. This opens the song up to another possible interpretation-- that the protagonist of the song is not awaiting a global disaster at all, but is instead watching over their child during the final stages of a terminal illness. I find the idea of this so heartbreaking that I can't bring myself to think of it for more than a couple of seconds.

In a way, I almost feel like Rob deserves co-writing credit on this, because I don't know if I would've ever written it without us tossing that original idea back and forth. However, the song itself-- lyrics and melody-- was written by me, so I'll just give Rob some credit for the inspiration.

I don't know if this song will ever get recorded. Ideally, I'd like to record it with Rob, as I feel that it would sound better as a guitar-based song. Maybe it's a little too on-the-nose, but when I hear it in my head, it sounds like a HIM song. To be honest, I don't know if I could ever get this song to sound the way I'd like it to. I find it difficult to direct guitarists to play the way I hear things in my head, because I don't 'speak' guitar. Come to think of it, I don't really 'speak' music at all lol. At any rate, at least for now, this one will remain 'unsung'.