'I care too much.' (lyrics + meaning) (Patreon)

Thank you sO much for such a gorgeous, heart-warming response to the April demo, 'I care too much.' (feat. angsty full stop in the title!). Seriously, it's been so lovely. Scroll back to my last post if you haven't heard/downloaded yet! 

This was a song I wrote with my lovely housemate Hannah, she's an incredible singer & songwriter. Because I live in a houseful of muso-types everyone's forever saying "omg! you guys must write & jam together aaall the time!" and funnily enough.. we don't, really. Because most of us are out and about during the day in studios and that, we generally come home and just plonk down on the couch, watch netflix together, etc. So finally, Han and I decided - nO! Let's take advantage of being in the same house and put a writing day in. And just like that, I added 'Hannah and Orla writing session' to my calendar.. (it did feel kinda funny to officially schedule something in with the person who sleeps in the room beside mine).

I brought the bones of this song into Hannah that fiiiine day.. I just had the first verse, and a loose lyric idea for the chorus. I told her I wanted to write a song about caring too much about someone and how utterly exhausting that can be. (This original skeleton came from one of the song challenges, by the way! The challenge to write a song with a 3/4 time signature! YAY. check). Luckily Han totally understood me and together we started to carve out a chorus, and eventually came to the super gypsy-rock-ish "oh" part that features in the mid8/outro :) at first we wrote the song on piano.. I had a sort of Russian, Regina Spektor-esque vibe in mind, but when I remembered I WASN'T RUSSIAN it suddenly felt a bit strange. So when it came to recording I tried it on electric guitar instead, which gave it the feel I was looking for.. all tender & forlorn in the verses, with a bit more bite towards the second half of the chorus with "I thought that I, was over this..". 

By the way, this is officially Orla's First Song With The F Word In It© ..I've never want to just crow bar curse words into songs for the sake of it, but that lyric in verse 2 about being in a state of flux just rung so true to me, and it felt so right to stick it in the line that followed. It just bled out a feeling of being so.. fed up. It sort of reminded me of a song The Staves released recently called 'Tired as Fuck'. I think it's so human.. being so utterly DONE that you can't even bother to come up with something more poetic to say.

The chorus starts with a confession "I care too much about the words we say and how we say them..". Having this as the central lyric (and title) felt perfect because it's so straight up, not wrapped up in some super abstract metaphor. That's probably why it stuck out to me so much and swam round my head for a couple weeks before I brought it to Han. The chorus runs a bit darker towards the end and becomes even more self-indulgent and self-pitying.. "I've cared for far too long". The problem doesn't lie with the person I'm singing about, the problem lies with me for saving no energy for myself.

If you have any Qs about this song (or any song) feel free to fire away, always. I might do a little production video for this track like I did for Lifeline, if anyone's up for that? :) I thought of something when I was recording this track, actually.. if anyone ever wants the stems/project/instrumental for any of these demos, just let me know in a comment or direct message on here  (I'm getting better at answering them, lolz). Would be really cool if anyone wanted play around with them and do a remix or cover anything.

ALL MY WEDNESDAY LOVE

og

xxx