You Never Saw The Best Of Me

Just a little something I wrote this morning in about thirty minutes.  Always love it when I get that and literally the whole song, in order, comes out of nowhere start to finish.  There’s nothing more tedious than fine-tuning a track..

It’s kind of a big piano 80’s power-ballad (no, no – come back!) like you’d find Heart or Bonnie Tyler or such doing back in the day.  Not overblown or anything though, quite stripped back until the chorus and the middle eight, it’s all about the melody and the vocals doing the work, not the production.  I actually wrote it with Cher in mind which surprises me more than anyone since I can count all of the Cher songs I know literally on one hand.  From the few tracks of hers back in the 70’s and 80’s I remember though, she has a pretty good, blues-ey voice when it’s brought to the forefront (unlike the autotuned trainwreck that was everything she’s ever done, ever post-Believe.)

‘you never saw the best of me’

shining
shining like a diamond in the setting sun
alone
reflecting all the light that came from ya

and as darkness fall
and i don’t light up the room
the way you wanted me to
and i can’t turn to you…
because you turned away

you never saw the best of me
you never saw me at all
you only saw my flaws
and when things got bad you never stuck around til they were through
you never saw the best of me, did you?
you never saw the best of me

falling
falling through the night like a dying star
crying
crying to myself cuz i don’t know where you are

and as morning comes
and i don’t know what to do
because i can’t rely on you
and i know that we’re through…
but i can finally see

you never saw the best of me
you never saw me at all
you only saw my flaws
and when things got bad you never stuck around til they were through
you never saw the best of me, did you?
you never saw the best of me

and when the darkness falls
and there’s nothing left at all
and there’s no one here to call
but i still know myself
and i am lucky as hell
and you can go to hell
(spoken) yeah, you can go to hell…

you never saw the best of me
you never saw me at all
you only saw my flaws
and when things got bad you never stuck around til they were through
you never saw the best of me, did you?
you never saw the best of me
you never saw the best of me
(you never saw the best of me, the rest of me..)
you never saw the best of me
(you never saw the best of me, the rest of me is the best of me)
you never saw the best of me
(spoken) you never saw the best of me.

So, yeah.  I guess it’s clearly started with the way I felt in the aftermath of the whole Matty debacle, but it’s a lot more than that.  A lot of it is a response to feelings that seeing Blue Valentine brought up about my Mum and the breakdown of her relationship to my step-dad over the last few years.  I like to think of it as one of the more universal things I’ve written, that it’s a feeling that a lot of people can relate to, and hopefully draw strength from..