T-LOG 0010 — NOTHING: The Fastest Song I’ve Ever Written
“Nothing” is probably the fastest song I’ve ever written.
It started after dinner.
I was doing the dishes when a bass line suddenly came into my head. There wasn’t a concept behind it yet. I wasn’t sitting down for a writing session. It was just there, and I knew I needed to get it down before it disappeared.
So I left the dishes, ran into my room/studio and started recording.
About seven hours later, the song was finished.
That is incredibly fast for me. I have a tendency to obsess over songs. I’ll change something, listen to it fifty times, change it back, decide something else is wrong, and generally drive myself insane over details that probably no one else will ever notice.
“Nothing” didn’t give me much time to do that.
And I think that’s one of the reasons I love it.
It’s simple. The bass line drives almost the entire thing. There aren’t a million layers competing for attention or some enormous climax waiting at the end. It just settles into this strange little world and stays there.
There’s an indie quality to it that I absolutely adore. It feels loose and a little imperfect. It doesn’t sound like it’s trying particularly hard to impress you.
It just feels good.
The best description I can give for the sound is this:
It’s like you’ve taken a sleeping pill and you’re trying desperately to fight it because something extraordinary is about to happen.
Your eyes are getting heavy. The edges of the room are starting to soften. Your body wants to shut down, but your brain has decided that absolutely fucking not, we need to stay awake for this.
That feeling ended up being perfect for what the song is actually about.
My husband.
Or, more accurately, my inability to stop being attracted to my husband.
That’s really it.
There’s no great tragedy hiding underneath this one. No tortured metaphor. No impending breakup. No mysterious stranger threatening our marriage.
I see him. He looks good. He gives me that look. And suddenly whatever I was doing five seconds ago is considerably less important.
The lyrics treat this almost like an inconvenience.
You got that look in your eyes
You know it’s the one that I despise
I obviously do not despise it.
That’s the joke.
There’s something very funny to me about being with someone for years, building a life together, knowing all of their habits and routines, and still occasionally looking at them and thinking, Goddammit.
You’d think familiarity would eventually take some of the mystery out of attraction.
Apparently not.
And I didn’t want to make that feeling overly romantic or precious. Attraction isn’t always poetic. Sometimes it’s sweet. Sometimes it’s overwhelming. And sometimes it makes you say incredibly stupid things.
Hence:
Tell me why my boys are feeling blue
I regret nothing.
What I particularly like about the finished recording is how seriously it seems to take all of this nonsense.
The vocal doesn’t announce the joke. The music doesn’t suddenly wink at you. Everything stays hazy, restrained and almost hypnotic while the lyrics become increasingly horny and ridiculous.
That contrast feels right to me.
The chorus keeps circling the same thought over and over:
I’m gonna get up in here
I swear I’m gonna get up in here
I’m gonna stay in there for the longest time
It’s not particularly sophisticated.
Neither is being horny.
But underneath all of that stupidity is something I actually mean very deeply:
My god, you’re a dream come true
My whole life, I didn’t know the dream was about you
That might be the real heart of “Nothing.”
For a long time, you have some vague idea of what love is supposed to look like. You imagine finding someone. You imagine building a life with them. You imagine this person who somehow makes everything make sense.
But the person in that dream doesn’t really have a face yet.
Then you meet someone.
Years pass. You build a home together. You have dinners. You do dishes. Life becomes wonderfully ordinary.
And every once in a while you look across the room at that person and realize:
Oh.
The dream was about you.
That’s what “Nothing” is about.
It’s about desire without needing to make desire profound. It’s about love without needing to make love tragic. It’s about the strange privilege of knowing someone intimately and somehow still being completely mesmerized by them.
And maybe that’s why the song only took seven hours.
I didn’t have to figure out what I was trying to say.
I already knew.
LYRICS
I see you out of the corner of my eyes
And I just can’t take my eyes off you
You mesmerize me and you haven’t a clue
Tell me why my boys are feeling blue
I’m gonna get up in here
I swear I’m gonna get up in here
I’m gonna stay in there for the longest time
You got that look in your eyes
You know it’s the one that I despise
I don’t mean to rhyme
You know what?
I just might have the time
My god, you’re a dream come true
My whole life, I didn’t know the dream was about you
Here we stand in the presence
Of our love’s ultimate menace
I’m gonna get up in here
I swear I’m gonna get up in here
I’m gonna stay in there for the longest time
You got that look in your eyes
You know it’s the one that I despise
I don’t mean to rhyme
You know what?
I just might have the time
I’m gonna get up in here
I swear I’m gonna get up in here
I’m gonna stay in there for the longest time
You got that look in your eyes
You know it’s the one that I despise
I don’t mean to rhyme
You know what?
I just might have the time
