BACKGROUND

“Come Home” is Embers’ sixth official release. This song came out of nowhere as I was strumming absentmindedly about a month ago. It started out with the basic verse pop-rock chords, and I immediately had a melody pop in my head. I got out the good ol’ iPhone voice memo app and in a few minutes I had the sketch of the verse and the chorus. By the next day I had added in the bridge section and outro chords and melodies. It’s rare that songs come together that quickly for me, but as soon as I realized this was a straight-up pop rocks song I decided to keep it simple and just get it going!

I had the initial lyric of “you and I are not the same” for the verse melody, again out of nowhere, with no context. The chorus refrains ending in “come home” were also placeholders, but as is often the case, I reverse-engineered a theme for the song from these. It wound up being about a (dysfunctional) relationship, the “can’t live with ya, can’t live without ya” story. The lyrics are NOT based on my marriage, I can tell you that, but maybe ripped from the headlines of some relationships from long ago? Who knows. 😉

LYRICS:

You and I are not the same
You’re always looking for somebody else to blame
But every time you disappear
I find myself wishing that you were near

Is there nothing I can do?
Nothing I can say to paint your black skies blue?
‘Cause every time you run away
I find myself begging for you to stay

‘Cause when you’re not around
My world is upside down so baby
Come home
And when the walls come down
There’s no one else around to save me
So come home

All we want is to be loved by someone
All we want is to be loved

‘Cause when you’re not around
My world is upside down so baby
Come home
And when the walls come down
There’s no one else around to save me
So come home
Please come home
Come home
Come home

THE MUSIC

As I’ve mentioned, this was kept pretty straightforward, with driving pop-rock guitar rhythms and bass, again heavily leveraging the Neural DSP Archetype: Nolly guitar amp plugin and Darkglass Ultra bass plugins. My $300 Gretsch hollow body actually sounded the most tight and crunchy for the main rhythms, although there are heavier sounds layered in the choruses, courtesy of my Strandberg Prog 7 string guitar through the newer Neural DSP Omega amp sim, which is SICK.

There’s not a lot of other flash in the song, but I enjoyed layering the Cars/Weezer-ish melodies with a mixture of guitars and the excellent UVI Falcon softsynth to get a nice filtered, sweeping sound.

I had a lot of fun banging this one out, and it was a nice change of pace to work on a song in this wheelhouse. I hope you enjoy it, and thanks for your support!