If you spend any real time writing songs, you’ll find it both incredibly beautiful and immensely frustrating how many different kinds of songs there are. I don’t mean in terms of genre or sound, but in the way a song comes together—and in the occasionally complex relationship you form with it.
There are songs that arrive in fifteen minutes and songs that take five years. There are songs that feel as though they were written by some other presence that infiltrated your room, and others you have to wrestle into submission before they escape through the crack in the window. Some songs feel like paintings—layer upon layer of color and texture—and others feel like sculptures, asking you to chip away until they reveal themselves.
Equally varied is the emotional connection you have to them. Some songs have an agenda, something to prove or say; others are more like collages of feeling rather than a single thesis. Some are deeply personal. Others just feel like an assembly of words that happened to feel right in the moment.
The most frustrating part is that none of this—the process, the connection, the intent—has much to do with whether a song is good or bad, or whether people love it or don’t. Sometimes the spark in your gut is right; other times it’s just your own attachment muddying up your objectivity.
“Counting Blessings” is a rare one for me. It feels like it happened in fifteen minutes, though I can’t recall exactly, because it didn’t feel like I wrote it at all. It wasn’t that some apparition took over, but rather that whatever that ghost was, it reached deep into my guts and pulled out everything I’d been trying to play and say for a whole year. When it was finished, I struggled not to weigh the rest of my catalog against it—it managed to do everything I’d been attempting, but with far less effort and excess.
The song was written in the first week of September 2018, and there was a loose release plan slated for May of 2020. The subject matter wasn’t about anything that happened that year, obviously, but its themes felt a little too on-the-nose for the moment. And there was also a sensitivity around white guys making themselves the center of the story in 2020… so we shelved it.
Since then, it’s just sat. I’ve played it for friends, but honestly, their reactions never seemed to match my own connection to it. There are songs that mean far less to me that have traveled much further and resonated more deeply—but that’s how it goes.
That’s what’s fun about writing here: I can say that. If this were part of a marketing plan for a new single, there’d be nothing dumber than saying, “Hey, this is one of my favorite things I’ve ever made, but my friends didn’t seem to give a shit.”
So now it’s yours to judge. You can be honest with yourself. This one will stay special to me, just as it has for the last six years.
Counting Blessings
Pieces of a woman left right on the concrete pieces of a woman left, right on the concrete oak tag, magic marker yelling "f*** the police" pieces of a woman left, right on the concrete pieces of a woman line of chalk at your feet oak tag, magic marker yelling “f*** the police” he's still yelling louder he’s still yelling louder he’s still yelling louder holding on to his receipt he’s still yelling louder he’s still yelling louder holding on to his receipt but you can't take it back. is it all for show? and should we feel better now? pieces of a woman left right on the concrete remember him from high school? does he still radiate heat? oak tag, magic marker yelling “f*** the police” he’s still yelling louder he’s still yelling louder we're still yelling louder he's holding on to his receipt but we’re still yelling louder he’s holding on to his receipt but we’re still yelling louder we’re still yelling louder we’re still yelling louder we’re still yelling louder we’re still yelling louder we’re still yelling louder we’re still yelling louder we’re still yelling louder we’re still yelling louder we’re still yelling louder we’re still yelling louder we’re still yelling louder
Counting Blessings (unreleased violent joy)
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