Gerard O'Riley

I wanted to take a unique angle on a song about a guy loving a girl. Instead of heaping a bunch of praise on his girl endlessly, the song is more of a warning for other things (men, death, whatever) to stay the heck out of his way, because his girl is his, and you can't have her! I've never seen another song like this. Not saying it's setting a new trend, just that its premise is original.

A lot of people--I mean a lot of people!--have been writing songs about the virus pandemic we're unfortunately still suffering through, as of late May, 2020. Me, I wanted to go a different route. A lot of people act as if this is the end of the world, so I wanted to write a song about a fantasy, post-apocalyptic world where a mother is trying to soothe her child while spreading some wisdom to her child about all the nothingness that's left out there. It's more general, not virus-based. I like it and feel it's rather poetic; turned out nicely.

I joined a songwriter's forum, primarily for country music songwriters, thinking I'd fit right in. I didn't. At all. It's all about pop radio hit country, the stuff they call "bro country." I don't typically write stuff like that. But, okay, I can technically. So, I thought I would. This is a very upbeat, heavy, tempo-driven song that's almost spoken-word in the verses yet explodes in the chorus and is the typical sort of "bro country" that's popular today.

There are so many love songs written, and I've written my fair share, though I wanted to get a little different, a little creative, and really tell a story asking the question: What if "love" were a place? Would you be weary traveling there? Would you want to go? How does it make one feel to cross the borders of "Love" and enter it? I like how this turned out.

While I still write and certainly listen to sad love songs, I don't always want them sad. This is a song about a guy who's crushed that his girl left him, but the overall tone of the song is just reflective, a guy looking back on the good in his life, and isn't necessarily written to be some emotional tear-jerker. It's far more upbeat than that.