Gerard O'Riley

Before I met my current girlfriend, my soulmate, I had a crush on this girl solely because she started off with a crush on me. I had resisted her, but she persisted. So I kinda fell for her, if only for being flattered, then she backed off. And all I could say to her was, "Okay. If you change your mind..." That got me thinking about anyone, young or old, man or woman, who likes someone who doesn't like them back, and sometimes we just hope they change their mind. Wrote a song about it. Like to hear it? Here it goes.

I must have been a pirate in a past life. A lot of my songs use ships and sailors and the sea as metaphors. This song is about a man who's lost the love of his life and is searching his own life for meaning, yet is tortured by her memory. So he wants to go back to his paradise. It was inspired by that scene in "The Green Mile" where the death row inmate is talking about his "best time," with his young wife in a cabin overlooking the mountainside.

Not really sure if there's a big story behind this. One of those things where there's just a melody playing in your head, so I put some words to it. I really love this chorus, though; probably a top-5 chorus of mine. Though not sure how it'll translate through just the written word. Think upbeat with emphasis on alliteration and the verse bleeding directly into the chorus.

Started singing to my girlfriend one night, a cover of Elton John's "Your Song," and she said she didn't like that song. So, okay, I wrote her her own song. She liked this one better, though maybe only because it was for her specifically. Now she can tell everybody...

I grew up in the hollers of the Appalachia. I'm convinced that there's nothing like a country girl. So I decided I'd write an anthem for those country girls. They deserve it. Plus I think the second verse is very clever - got some double entendre happening for the college football fans out there.