Dark, suburban love
Wet lawns and jungle-gyms appear
To be dripping with night
Filling with water
As Emma slips from brassiere
Because
You wanna be
Teenage dream
Teenage dream
Every church parking lot
Has an automatic light
For every neighborhood oak tree
To spill white shadows on the night
You are all tangled up
Sipping your water
Over my clinging onto you
And I am wanting so bad
Emulating your father
For you to let me to
Because
You wanna be
Teenage dream
Teenage dream
You wanna be
Teenage dream
Teenage dream
When it is over I go
Into the living room alone
And in the darkness I knew
This was the evening
But if I saw you tonight
Then if I saw you again
Would things this time be different?
I have seen half your life
You've seen half of mine
You're like my family
Because
You wanna be
Teenage dream
Teenage dream
You wanna be
Teenage dream
Teenagers
Blue-faced Honeyeater is actually the earliest song ever begun on Into Blossom. The verse guitar part dates all the way back to 2017. I just couldn't find a melody I liked for the part. Radiohead has always been an influence but I think with this one it's especially obvious. The picking pattern comes from "Faust Arp" and the B chord shape is the same one used in "Reckoner", both of which I had definitely been listening to around that time.
Fast forward to Spring semester of 2021, and I was in a creative writing class that had the option of submitting a song as the final project, so I decided to finish Blue-faced Honeyeater for it. At the time I was working as a practice-room monitor at Gardner Hall at the University of Utah and the student studio was in that building so I'd work on music a lot during my shifts. It was Covid so there was never even anyone there. I remember one day, it was a very beautiful Spring day and I had done Molly the night before for the first time so I was feeling really sensitive. I remember deciding that day to sit down and finish the melody and lyrics, no matter what. I spent the whole shift pacing around the atrium, laying on the benches, making rounds of the building... just trying to find a way in. And then finally something popped into my head: "Dark, suburban love / wet lawns and jungle-gyms appear..." and the rest came pretty easily after that.
After the lyrics were finished I remember the production coming very easily. Every single harmony, instrument, rhythym just fit right in. The intro vocal harmonies were written on guitar. I don't think that's something I would have done with my voice otherwise. I love those. It reminds me of the harmonies in Hey Jude. The piano melody I love too. The paper sounds were recorded just on a little journal that was in the student studio. That very much happened because of "Present Tense" by Radiohead.
I also remember, at some point in the songwriting, I was pacing around my backyard trying to incorporate the E F# "bridge" part into the song. I think I literally jumped for joy when I got it. It's the "Teenaaaagers" part at the end. I love it because it's the whole climax of the song and you need to release. And it's such a big grounded cadence after the whole tonal ambiguity of the rest of it. Like it's so cathartic and transformative, which is exactly what's supposed to happen at the end of a song.
I'm so proud of this song and I think it's probably the best one on the album. Certainly the most ambitious. The lyrics are fantastic and mean so much to me. The musical element is so absurd sounding. And feels so honest to me too. It feels like the perfect culmination of all my influences in music. I have a list of them actually: Lewis Evans' sax in "Haldern" on the vocal honks, Marty Robbins' haunting, descending "Big Iron" harmonies on the 2nd verse vocal harmonies. Steve Reich and Sufjan Stevens on the trumpet. "Some Velvet Morning" by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood for the bowed-to-plucking bass after the intro. "Aguas de Marco" by Elis & Tom. The soaring climax of "Son para Ti" by Sierra Maestra. Let Down by Radiohead, how the 2nd guitar holds off at the end til the last possible moment, and the vocals. "American Dream" by LCD Soundsystem on the aesthetic and structure. The vocal harmonies in "No More Runnin" by AnCo. "Tell Me What I Don't Know" off Atrocity Exhibition, specifically the whistle in the chorus. The string glissando down to that low note in "River Man" by Nick Drake. Also the same kind of thing in Penny Lane at the final verse. "Skinny Love" for "brassiere", and "Creature Fear" for the structure, partly. The bridge of "Devil In A New Dress", how the drums hold off so long. These are all my favorite songs of all time. "Half of my life" also came from Radiohead. Daydreaming.
First ever demo of BFHE:
("Bad Things Can Happen", February 16th, 2017)
There's some other stuff going on in this recording that I guess didn't stick. Lyrical themes are somewhat similar, interestingly.
Here's another attempt from a couple months later:
("Combine With 'moon'?", May 23, 2017) ["moon" AKA "Snowplow"...]
After this the part was abandoned and not returned to until late in 2019:
("From old recording 'bad things will happen'", October 2, 2019)
Chorus progression, lyrics, and melody written a couple days later:
("New Recording 57", October 7, 2019)
"Call you again" line, some verse melody, and the title assigned the following month:
("Blue faced honey eater possible vocal melody", Nov 23, 2019)
Abandoned for a few months and still trying to figure out the melody:
("Blue faced melody maybe final", March 13, 2020)
Two "possible bridges" from later in 2020, the latter of which became the E F# progression in the final recording:
("Blue-faced honeyeater possible bridge", October 7th, 2020)
("Blue-faced honeyeater possible bridge / Ending", October 8th, 2020)
I don't have any voice memos past this point so I must have made the jump to Pro Tools then. The earliest bounce from Pro Tools I have is May 6th, 2021. It's very spare. There's only guitar, vocals, piano, papers, and breathing:
The next bounce, from March of 2022, is much more filled out. There's added percussion, vocal harmonies, voice memo samples, some strings, and an attempt at a bass arrangement:
And by September the song was basically finished:
The only real compositional difference between this recording above and the final one is some more extra percussion I added later, and the string arrangement for the 2nd verse, which had stumped me for a while. What I had was too lounge-y. It sounded like Pet Sounds and it was supposed to sound like In Rainbows. What I didn't realize was it needed violin.
Intro percussion solo'd:
Intro vocal harmonies solo'd:
2nd verse strings solo'd:
Personnel:
Cordoba C7
Yamaha Grand piano
Old Maggini-copy Violin
Paganini WR70 Cello
Steve's Stand-up Bass
Jupiter JTR700 Trumpet
Drumkit With Brushes
LP Mini Bongos
Tablas
Voice Memos
Small Journal
Egg Shaker
Chopsticks
Wood Box
Drum Practice Pad
Camping Flask
Small Pot
Big Pot
Rubbermaid 1.2L Tupperware
Recorded at 16bit 44.1khz
For this song I was unhappy with Alan's masters and wanted it to sound like my own mix so we just used a limiter to bring it up to volume.
Pro Tools Session Files
Contemporaneous notes from this song:
Lyrics sheet:
