I had wanted to write a song that was all affirmation, all encouragement for many years but, for one reason or 100 others, was unable to do it until recently. Either I wasn't in the 'right place' to write that kind of song emotionally or other projects and responsibilities intervened or I just didn't feel like I could write that kind of piece with any sincerity, it just didn't happen until, ironically, I made a stupid mistake in the studio at about 3 a.m. I was actually working on some base tracks for the second half of "This War is Over" but realized I had recorded at too fast a tempo for the lyrics I'd originally penned for that song (yes, there are lyrics ... you'll have to wait for the next album ... ;p). Anyway, spent hours laying down these tracks that I had just figured out were totally unusable. A lot of people would have been righteously p***ed at themselves for having done that but I wasn't. I felt like I'd recorded something proud, inspiring and affirmative. When it comes to music, I'm a believer in two things: First, there are no "mistakes", just "happy accidents" leading to more creativity and, if nothing else, inspiration. Second, the price of sounding incredible some of the time is, often, sounding horrible most of the time. But there was nothing horrible about what I had recorded here, I was just hoping to use it in a different way. Then, it came to me: all of it. The words for my "all-affirmation-all-the-time" song. It was there. The words and music started flowing as if someone else was writing them for me and I could feel the whole song in its entirety (NB - That's what song-writing/composition is like on a really, REALLY good day ... This was a really, REALLY good day ...). Every kind, encouraging, empowering, affirmative image and metaphor I ever wanted to remind myself of in harder times just poured out of me into this song and I fell in love with it, even when it wasn't 1/8 finished and no-one else could hear in it what I could hear. It's obviously a turn-about on the biblical prophecy about the "end times" being marked by "wars and rumours of wars". In keeping with the album's theme of time, its passage and spending it wisely while we have it, I re-cast this warning as a timeless anthem to "peace and rumours of peace". We've grown too comfortable in the early 21st century thinking of these as the "end times" (Hence the lyrics in 'Who Cares?', "Sometimes it's hard ... to believe this is not the end of the world"). I wanted to break that thinking with a song that presumes timelessness, opportunities for heroism every moment of everyday, renewed hope with each breath and the capacity of every person to be the hero they were born to be.
- Matt Entwistle
For more information on this and other songs, visit us at
ncpband.com Included with track art.
from
No Commercial Potential: Who Cares?,
released July 12, 2016
Matt, music and lyrics * Mel, permission to have written such awesome lyrics & drums * Lee, bass * Ally, keyboards * Ian, lead guitar
