This song came together very fast – which isn’t saying much since it seems to take us a year to choose one synth patch. The chords are the same throughout, but shifted over an eighth note in the chorus. We tracked the verse guitar chords one note at a time so that they ripple like a synthesizer’s arpeggiator, which I’ve thought about doing for maybe a hundred years. The chorus went through a few iterations and we ended up with two totally different arrangements. L'Rain chose this song right away and brought so much pathos to her performance. Her wordless chorus at the end is sublime.
It’s a song about love and devotion, and the fear of losing those things. It is a banal, cruel fact that love is so self-evidently what life is about, yet it opens us up to visitations from the worst horrors imaginable. There are so many ways to lose something irreplaceable: breakup, serious illness, plane crash… Any time I’m reminded of this, I fill with terror: “It’s a long way down to the bottom now.”
