#willsims

Lyrics:

V1: My soul is aching, my spirits breaking, my head is thinking, my heart it is beating,

My soul is aching, my spirits breaking, my head is thinking, my heart it is beating,

Chorus: Will you remember the things that I said to you? Will you remember the things that I did for you? Will you remember what I said to you? Will you remember that I love you?

and I want to know, if you ever loved me too...

V2: Your eyes are shining, your soul is showing, your lips are moving, but I am not listening,

Your eyes are shining, your soul is showing, your lips are moving, but I am not listening,

Chorus 2: Will you remember the times I was there for you? Will you remember the look you gave me too? Will you remember what it's like to be wanted? Will you remember you're all I ever wanted?

and I want to know, did you ever want me too...

Outro: I want to let go, I want to let go, I want to forgive and forget, I want to let go, I want to let go, Will we ever move on I want to let go, I want to let go, It may never be forgotten I want to let go, I want to let go,

The Story

When I first started writing this song it was around 2009/2010. It was, and always has been, a very personal song to me. I wrote it about someone I had very strong feelings for. She was someone I had known a long time, we could have been good friends but for most of that time I felt the way I did and I always knew in my heart that nothing would ever become of it. I did eventually tell her, and she reacted exactly the way I thought she would. I have very rarely felt the way about another person as I've felt about her.

The song is was about how it felt when I knew we wouldn't really see each other again, we were on separate paths in life. There was a little bit of bad blood between us, mostly because of things that I did. I wondered if anything good that we experienced together really meant anything at all. It was the time I first realized how a break up must feel (even though it wasn't really a break up), knowing that everything you had experienced with each other was just going to be a memory as opposed to something you were holding on to together.

Originally, I brought the song to the band I was in at the time called 'Far From Sundown' and we worked out a version of it that included acoustic guitar and piano. I always knew the song would call for that arrangement. It was important to me that the song captured some of the feeling of loss but also hope that the experiences we share with someone aren't meaningless if you aren't together anymore.

Recording

The first and last song recorded on 'May Never Be Forgotten' went through a lot of iterations. The version from the Far From Sundown era had the basic idea of the song there, though we only played it live once in 2010. It didn't resurface again until 2013/2014 when I went to Sheffield Institute for Recording arts to do some songs for what would become my first solo album. Joe Ruggiero, Eric Robinson, Joey Underwood, and John Davis all took part in the live recording session.

Probably a year or two after that I finally took the songs to Tony Correlli at The Deep End Studio to try and make something of these recordings. It was there that he wrote what I think may be one of the best piano riffs ever over the chorus. It's what really gave it the emotional feel that I was going for. While the song in general came out sounding great, I thought maybe there was a better version of the song I could put out there for the world to hear.

We ended up re-recording it to give it more of a hopeful vibe instead of the somber feel of the original. The new version featured Jeff Gardner on Drums andf became the first song on the album and had a music video filmed for it. At the time of writing this I am also working on a stripped down acoustic version of the song, closer to the way it was originally written.