The Meaning Of: EVERYTHING
Crissi Cochrane
Welcome back to The Meaning Of, a series of blog posts exploring the meaning behind each song from my 2020 album, Heirloom. I’ll explain the stories that inspired the songs, and reveal some of the roots and references that helped shape my musical and lyrical choices. If there’s something particular that you’re curious about that I haven’t revealed, leave me a question in the comments below, and I’ll be pleased to answer it.
The next song in the series is Everything. It’s easy to miss this song on the album, being near to the end, but it’s the most climactic and meaningful song I have ever recorded, and one of my very favourites. It’s moody, raw, resilient, real - wave upon wave, building to higher heights - purifying. This song is best enjoyed on headphones, loud, with your eyes shut.
All of the songs on Heirloom were written in the one-bedroom apartment where I lived with Mike from 2010 to 2018. There were a few different spots in the apartment where I liked to write, but the best places were always near the enormous west-facing windows that ran the length of our rooms. I remember writing this song in our dining room (which I had converted into an office) at dusk, as night was falling around me. It was one of the easiest songs to write, complete in one sitting. I didn’t get up to turn on the lights, I just continued singing softly in the dark, curled around my nylon-stringed guitar.
When I wrote “Everything”, I was in need of a song to ground me. I was returning to performing live after a year of stage fright and anxiety, and I thought it would be helpful to have a song in my set that could be a sort of secret safe place, where I could remind myself of what it means to be resilient. I had tried to do this many times before, but my anguish would invariably seep through and create something that was too raw to reinforce me. I felt like I was finally able to achieve it with this song. Maybe it was watching the day end gently around me from my safe perch on the third floor, the night settling peacefully over the rooftops like a dark bird.
I had wanted to feel everything, when I was younger. I thought that having so much experience would grant me greater insight, a more interesting perspective, better stories to tell. And maybe, for a time, that philosophy served. But as I entered my mid-twenties, I had been fascinated by the novelty of negativity for so long that I had lost all healthy coping skills, bleeding out all of my emotional energy with no ability to control myself. I grew up healthy and loved, but like so many young adults, I was in love with angst-ridden art made by wonderful, miserable people, and I don’t think you could fault me for thinking that it seemed that the misery was the crux of their talent. So any dramatic thing, break-up, argument, or perceived slight was the impetus for my next creation. And each dramatic thing was dwelled upon, every little morsel put to use, burned like fuel. I had lived this way for so long, that I couldn’t (and didn’t want) to stop myself. I am inexorably drawn to the idea of the dark poet: that mysterious, bitter, alarming, urgent, intoxicating person, walking a tightrope at the brink of destruction.
I created so many problems for myself that I nearly stopped making music, but step by step, I made my way back to myself, learning how to grow my own self-confidence with experience, quitting bad habits, and taking better care of my mind and body.
The songs on Heirloom captured a person who is so very different from who I was on Little Sway. No more asking you to “Look Away” so that I can dwell in my self-doubt in a dark booth, far away from the dance floor. No more believing that the words “I love you” are lies or “just Pretty Words”. No more bird-in-a-cage, no more I-don’t-need-to-be-around. The person on that album is utterly heartbreaking. I am glad if she helped you, but she did not help me.
It feels like Heirloom isn’t quite getting its due, and that could be the fault of many things - the pandemic, the industry, the way an album sometimes grows legs slowly, as Little Sway did, or maybe from an artistic standpoint there is some elusive element that it is missing - but my heart burns with a fierce love for Heirloom because it is a testament to self-love, to banishing toxic people, and choosing gratitude and resilience. And I think “Everything” is the song that most encapsulates this, leaving behind the self-deprecating person I was on Little Sway, born out of the realization that it is toxic to try to feel everything, that entire shadow world of bleak sadness is a place you should visit no more than necessary. I don’t even give that sadness any airtime in the song, affirming instead the things that I do feel - that my being is valid and has worth, no matter whether anyone else sees it or not.
There are a few last things I’d like to share about this song in production. While he was arranging the horns for the song, Mike had the choruses and verses backwards, so he created lush verses and sparse choruses, which accidentally complemented - quite perfectly - the sentiment that I don’t need to feel everything, just as all of the instrumentation falls away. I love that agreement between the song’s message and its instrumentation.
An excerpt of the string score, arranged by Mike Hargreaves and charted by Austin Di Pietro.
I struggled with how to approach singing throughout the climax of the song, and in the end, I tried to make myself a stillpoint, like a rock in a strong current, for the most part letting everything sweep around me.
I originally intended “Everything” to be the final song on the album, the closer. However, when we began preparing the files for the vinyl pressing of the record, we learned that you cannot place very loud or dynamic songs at the end of a side, because Inner Groove Distortion that tends to be exacerbated by loudness, resulting in a sort of crushed or clipping quality to any peaks in the waveform. So, we had to place it third from the end of the album. In the end, I think this track listing is for the best, because after the blistering climax of “Everything”, you are more open to the beauty of the two songs that follow - “Heaven”, and “Midnight Wind”. I look forward to closing out this blog series with these last two posts very soon!
EVERYTHING - CRISSI COCHRANE
I don't need to feel everything
Cause everything I feel
Feels like nothing else at all
I don't need to feel everything, no, no, no
Cause everything I feel
Feels like nothing else at all
Everything I feel
Feels like nothing else at all
As long as I can see the stars
Or at least, know where they are
I'm gonna be alright
As long as there's a wind to bring me
A bird to sing to me
I'm gonna be alright
As long as I'm living, I'll be
Giving all I got, giving all I got,
Giving all I've got
We're only here for a good time
So I don't need to feel everything
Cause everything I feel
Feels like nothing else at all
I don't need to feel everything, no, no, no
Cause everything I feel
Feels like nothing else at all
Everything I feel feels like nothing else at all
Everything I feel - I feel
Feels like nothing else at all
As long as I'm living, I'll be
Giving all I got, giving all I got
Giving all I've got
As long as I'm living, I'll be
Giving all I got, giving all I got
Giving all I've got
We're only here for a good time
We're only here for a good time
So I don't need to feel everything, no
Cause everything I feel
Feels like nothing else at all
I don't need to feel everything, no
Cause everything I feel
Feels like nothing else at all
Everything I feel feels like nothing else at all
Everything I feel -
Is like nothing else at all
Is like nothing else at all
Is like nothing else at all
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