I Mean It
a song about love
While I am aware that I am no Johnny Cash, I am a bass and this is a country song, so he was my musical inspiration for this one. I love the spoken style of some of Cash's storytelling songs, and who doesn't love a country song with a catchy chorus with the story in the verses (ie. The Gambler, A Boy Named Sue, etc.)? So, with all that in mind I sat down with my guitar and wrote myself a country song.
For those of you who know me pretty well, the autobiographical nature of this song was probably apparent, but for the rest of y'all, I'm Cooper in this song. It is so strange to me how some people, when they get broken up with, say that they never loved the person anyway. I know this is a coping mechanism, but I don't think it's a good one. Of course, it is very fair to not love them anymore, but in my life, I have meant it when I have said "I love you." I just have grown in the maturity of what that love is. It seems paradoxical, but I've found it true in my life that I've heard, meant, and said it before, but can still say I love you and mean it fully, no asterisks. And, since writing this song, I am grateful to have found someone to say this chorus to.
Special thanks to my dad for tracking cajon and kick drum on this one!
If We Could Know
a song about courage
The second song in the kind of "love song trilogy," this song starts out about doubt and ends about courage. I believe that in every relationship, there are points of fear and doubt. No one wants to pour their heart into a relationship if things aren't going to work out. I certainly don't, but there's often no way to know. If we could know, it really would be easier to give someone all my love. Obviously, though, we cannot know what the 30-year future holds, but I still want to be able to fall in love if I believe it is at all possible that it will stay her and me. That's what courage in a relationship looks like, I think. When those doubts and fears come, to go forward despite them, together.
I had the great opportunity to record this on an acoustic Yamaha grand in the GCU studio instead of the electric piano. I think that rawness adds to the integrity of the song. As I've continued to mess around with the chord progression, even after recording, my urge is to add so much more, but I value the meditative space that the song in its recorded form provides.
This might be my favorite song on the album. I love the wordplay I stumbled on, the acoustics of the piano, and that super fun run in the piano and voice that took me way longer than it should've to master.
It's Been a While
a song about retrospecting
So what does retrospecting mean? It means to look back in thought. This song looks back in thought very personally. The song is a cappella to represent my joining of an a cappella choir in my early high school years. It's topic is one that truly cannot be described in the present, but is still a milestone in my past. Even saying "it's been a while" sticks the speaker in retrospect.
I don't like breakup songs. They whine, cry and blame or ask for her back. There is a time for tears, but the moments we should remember are the benefits of the relationship as it was. Like it or not, a person was a part of your life for a while and to dismiss them is to dismiss the growth you had in that time. I am lucky to have had all my relationships end relatively amicably. Of course my first relationship was the hardest to lose, but it showed me how to move on, to acknowledge the importance of that person in my life, and care without wanting her back. It sometimes takes a while, but it allows for peaceful and growth-minded retrospecting, and for that, I'm grateful.
Special thanks to Ryan Buckland for mixing and mastering all the songs, but especially this one — I know it was probably tough trying to blend a bunch of "me"s together.
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