How Lonely is a sexy song. I don’t know if I’ve written a straight up sexy song before, so this might be the very first one. Chemistry between lovers is such a mysterious thing. It blows where it will, and when it falls on you at first it’s totally wild. Passion clouds your senses. You find yourself operating in a whiplash combo of delirium/fight or flight anxiety (will this person love me back? Do the feel the same way I do?). It’s fascinating the way the alchemy of two lovers changes over time. When writing this song, I was thinking back to when my love and I first met. Nonstop sparks and fireworks. Sexually. Emotionally. Spiritually. Even in our friendship with eachother, there’s this intense spark. We laugh hard we cry hard. We’re not neutral on anything (unfortunately). There’s something about being seen as you are that’s really sexy. And it gets better, so much better, with time and steady, unwavering pursuit of each other. It’s never static--always morphing and evolving into something it wasn’t the day before. He and I have by turns joked and reflected over the years about how different life would have been if we hadn’t fallen for eachother. We’re opposites in nearly every way. I’d be living with multiple roommates, working several jobs to support my art or teaching violin at a fine arts conservatory and be a completely unbearable snob. (Clarifiation -- there are lots of good people in that world, I just wasn’t cut out for it and success in classical music would have only made me even more of a head case, and conceited to boot.) In all likelihood I don’t think I’d be writing and performing my own work. I’d be curating the works of dead people. He’d be perfectly stable, and probably very bored. The vocal inflection and chord progression leans into the sort of linear, roaming topography of intimacy. The production is very inspired by Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Games.” I played around a lot with making the vocal hint at a falsetto without ever totally going there, so it stays kind of close to you the whole song. The strings are a favorite touch, especially the mixture of plucking against the lush sparkling trills. Those tremors add so much to the feeling, for me. It reflects those shimmering changes and surprises along the way in a tryst between two willing hearts, “It’s heaven, wearing skin with you.” The spark that we share keeps life so filled with color. It’s a dance. The line is “If I never felt it, never fell in love, So alive when I felt it, we fell in love,” and that’s the gist of the song. It’s real. Raw. Naked. A firey, vulnerable dance between two people.
lyrics
All the way gone
You gave me the moon
Hold me If You Want
Only one more round, and I’m down
With you
With you
If I never felt it, never fell in love
If I, never felt it, when we fell in love
So alive, when I felt it, we fell in love
So alive, when I felt it, we fell in love
Oh how lonely I am
Hold me in the fire
Burning up
It’s heaven wearing skin
With you
With you
If I never felt it, never fell in love
If I, never felt it, when we fell in love
So alive, when I felt it, I fell in love
So alive, when I felt it, I fell in love
With you
With you
credits
from The Way Down,
track released November 19, 2021
Critically acclaimed indie americana artist and multi-instrumentalist Van Plating has a rugged vulnerability uniquely hers ─ fermented in the orange groves and hot verdant summers of the sunshine state.
I saw Adeem live at Waynestock in Knoxville this year, and they had the best performance by far. But they shine just as bright on record as live. I love this album; they've got a real knack for emotionally resonant lyrics. bloodybook
Excellent. You sound so different. A bit Elvis Costello and Elliot Smith in there. An urban album. Great clean sound. Love Holidays. More, please? Roy Greer