Story Behind the Song: Heartbroken

Heartbroken

At my live shows, when people ask for an original (which is my favorite type of request, by the way), I sometimes give them a choice:  Do you want a song about Colorado, a sad song, a happy song, or a sad song that sounds like a happy song?  They usually pick the last option because it seems so oxymoronic, and I make it sound like it’ll be fun and/or funny.  I then bill it as The Most Cheerful Sad Song You’ve Ever Heard.

I’ve been avoiding telling you the whole story about this album because, I’ll be honest, it’s hard to tell, and I wonder how much of my personal life deserves to be so public.  But I can’t tell the story of a few of these songs without it, so here goes.  In December of 2011, my little brother, Tyler Black, died in a plane crash.  He was 24 years old at the time, and we were definitely close.  It was life-changing, harrowing, awful, gut-wrenching, and all the typical emotions you’d expect when someone so close to you passes away so unexpectedly.  I was going back through my songbooks, procuring photos for these posts, and saw the songbook from 2011-2012.  As I do when I get heartbroken about anything, I wrote about it.  And I wrote about it.  And I wrote about it.  A lot of the musical musings I was creating at the time will never see the light of day– they were too much, too dark, too scattered.  I just wrote because music and songwriting has always been my outlet of choice, my therapy, if you will, for coping with loss and disappointment.

Spicebox, my brother Tyler, and me.  This is one of my favorite photos of us, partially because he’s wearing a t-shirt from my original band, Red Rhapsody, in which he played bass.

One night, I was drinking some spiced whiskey, called “Spicebox.”  It was my brother’s favorite at the time of his death, and on nights when I really missed him, I’d have a glass of it, neat.  I sat down at the piano and started writing, “I’ve been thinking a little too much / I’ve been drinking but it’s not enough /  To get you, to get you off of my mind / To leave you, to leave you behind.”  I kind of cracked myself up while writing it because the piano part was so happy-go-lucky and catchy, and here I was, crying and sad.  It was almost like my fingers were channelling my brother and his quirky, happy-go-lucky attitude, and my words were speaking my sad truth.  I laughed, probably poured myself another glass of whiskey, and went to bed.  The words were true– no amount of thinking, drinking, wishing, or hoping was going to change the fact that my brother was gone and that was just making me and a lot of other people irrevocably sad. The song sat, unfinished, in the songbook along with the rest of the therapy songs from that year or two.

Flash forward almost two years later, and I was going through another heartbreak, this time of the romantic persuasion.  I was still grieving the abrupt loss of my brother, and then I found myself grieving the abrupt end of a relationship; I never really saw either one coming.  This song popped into my head again, and it reminded me that it is possible to find a sliver of humor in every bad situation.  I dug out the song book and started adding verses.  One of the things that made me crazy/angry/frustrated when I would encounter people that knew about my brother’s death was that they would say, “Don’t worry, everything happens for a reason.”  Maybe it does, but when you’re face-down in a pile of manure of grief, you don’t feel that way, and those words add insult to injury, implying that you shouldn’t be sad, you shouldn’t be so distraught.  I felt the intense need to be sad, to cry when I felt like it (I didn’t really wear mascara for about a year… ) to be distraught and to deal with it.  My little jab at that phrase “Everything happens for a reason,” rears its head in one verse, when I say, “They say that I’m gonna heal in time / My friends are sayin’ I’m gonna be fine…. They say that everything happens for a reason, but I’m not sure that I believe ’em / They’re just trying to make me stop crying, I really wish they’d just stop trying…”  Everybody’s intentions were good, and that’s the point, but it felt like a knife in the gut at the time.  People that didn’t know me that well would say everything would be fine, and it was, sort of, eventually, but those words might as well have been arrows when slung around so arbitrarily after a heartbreak.  There’s a great article about this that sums up everything I wish people knew, including myself now that I know about the many missteps and mistakes I made when I tried to do the awkward task of comforting someone who had recently lost someone (or been through a breakup, for that matter).  I still love them for loving me and wanting me to be happier, don’t be mistaken.  If you’ve never been in my shoes and have never had someone tell you that everything happens for a reason, when to you, it clearly didn’t, then I hope you can appreciate the sly educational bent I’m on here….

At any rate, I’ve learned that having a sense of humor about heartbreak of all kinds can lead to healthy healing and recovery, and as I go back and look at some of the verses at various times during the writing process, I can see how much it helped me move on and keep going.

In the original demo of the song, the piano is key, no pun intended (okay, it was).  You can hear it here, but forgive the shaky vocals and sparse accompaniment– this version exists for the sole purpose of the band learning it.  My live version (also below) is about the same.

In the studio, we decided to kick the piano out and get most of the rhythm from the guitar, bass, and drums.  Keyboard sounds can be heard throughout, but it isn’t the primary instrument.  We decided to make the ending really dark with a sour minor chord, because as someone mentioned in the studio, “Heartbreaks are gnarly, man!  They don’t deserve a happy ending!”

When I released the EP (above version), I listened to this song over and over thinking that there were a few little things about it (mostly my voice and delivery) that I didn’t like.  I also changed a few words, added some laughter to make the humor side of it come through.  I re-recorded vocals and had Scott “Scooter” Smith remix the song, and I’m much happier with the new version on the full album (which you can buy right here right now!).

I’m happy to say I’m not entirely heartbroken anymore about either event.  With regards to the relationship I lost, I can see now that it is for the best– he’s happy and I’m happy and nobody is any worse-off.  With regards to my brother, there will always be some heartbroken moments, but when people ask, I tell them I’m okay 90% of the time and still reel from it 10% of the time, which I feel like is a pretty solid stat, given the circumstances.  It’s been almost six years.  There are things you don’t get over, there are other things you do.  I’m happy to say that I’m doing okay.  I’ll never be the same, but life goes on.

Spoiler alert, there are more songs on this album that circle around my brother and his untimely death.  In some ways, writing about it is helping me make peace with it, All These Years later, which will be the next Story Behind The Song, but it isn’t entirely about my brother.  See you next Thursday!

-Lacey

p.s. I’m not writing these things to solicit pity, comfort, or well-wishes– I really just want you to know the whole story!  Don’t worry!  I’ve found all the spirituality I need, I know my place in this world, I am well acquainted with the great joy that can come as a result of great loss, and I know that if you’re reading this, you probably care.  Thanks for that.