| Jenny Owen Youngs – O God Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| She wrote the first bit of this song in 2009 when she was opening for Regina Spektor in Zurich, while she was messing around back stage. She later came back to America to finish it off and add some sweet cello! | |
| Jenny Owen Youngs – Two By Two Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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"TWO BY TWO is the eighth song on AN UNWAVERING BAND OF LIGHT. This song was created after drum tracking for the album had already been completed. Dan wanted to write a couple more songs to have in the running for final album track list selection, but we wrote within the parameters of not being able to record any more drum kit. As a result there’s a lot of pots and pans and slinky percussion. I always think of this song as a serpent, the same way I think about Joni Mitchell’s “The Jungle Line.” I wrote the chorus lyrics first: All you love commit to the ash All you worked for gone in a flash You can’t look forward while you’re looking back …and originally worked on two sets of verses that each followed a different theme. Set 1 explored human volcano sacrifice, which has haunted me since I first saw it in an animated Garfield holiday special when I was 7 or 8. Set 2, which ultimately became the final lyrics, follows the grieving Orpheus down into Hades as he tries to recover the lost Eurydice. When I was a kid my mom worked across the street from the county library and some days during summer break I’d just hang out there from 9 to 5, reading anything and everything. Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology got under my skin early and stayed for good. " -Jenny Owen Youngs on "Two by Two" |
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| Jenny Owen Youngs – Already Gone Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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"It is also the song about which I’ve felt most nervous to write. I have given a lot of thought to what might be said about it, including but not limited to the fact that I attempted to write a set of lyrics which explored the role mental illness can play in a relationship, romantic or otherwise. The relationship I had in mind is triangular, but whether there are three people involved, or two people and a disease, I’m not sure. The thing is this: Some songs are easily explained. Some songs have a clear narrative arc and an easily identified purpose. Other songs are ungraspable, made of light instead of dirt, a sort of musical head rush - something definitely happened, but what? This song is (to me) such a song. I encourage you to listen and draw your own conclusions. I actually encourage those actions with regard to every song, but this song more than most." -Jenny Owen Youngs on "Already Gone" |
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| Jenny Owen Youngs – So Long Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| J.O.Y said the inspiration from this song came when she was reading about the Jonestown Massacre (in which all those people in the religious cult commune drank koolaid with poison and engaged in mass suicide). The song is particularly inspired by a 5 year-old boy who hid in the woods and watched until the mass suicide was over. | |
| Jenny Owen Youngs – Sleep Machine Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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From J.O.Y.: "As a teenager, I spent my fair share of hours poring over Sylvia Plath’s writing, but I always favored her poetry over her prose and The Bell Jar was foggy in my memory. Seeing someone so obviously and so directly affected by it made me revisit the novel. And I’ll say, I am also no exception to the rule: it fucked me up good and proper. It consumed me so thoroughly that when Dan Romer and I started writing what would become “Sleep Machine,” I knew there was only one idea the lyrics could explore. So what we have here is a song in which I try to explore the experience of moving from darkness into light and back again, via the power, and ultimately the impermanence, of electroconvulsive therapy treatment." |
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| Jenny Owen Youngs – Love for Long Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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"this is a little ditty about a cross country murder story, if that's what you're into, but it's very romantic... something for everyone"- Jenny Owen Youngs Which is interesting, because the instrumental is featured on a Philadelphia Cream Cheese commercial. All meanings aside, this is one of J.O.Y.'s best songs, in my opinion- it's catchy and well written |
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