Today I decided to take another stab at Stranger Days.
At one point, these lyrics were tied to another thing called Our Day Will Come. When I originally conceived the idea of releasing smaller groups for each season, those lyrics tied into Stranger Days Have Come. Both had a similar pre-chorus, the same chorus melody and bridge — the latter just contained slightly different lyrics to contrast the two seasons. Each one would thus have a very different meaning in the story I was trying to tell at the time. (I was actually really proud of it and thought the concept was pulled off quite effectively.)
When it became obvious the seasonal releases weren’t going to happen, I sort of frankensteined Stranger Days from both lyrics. The end result was 98% Stranger Days have Come — I just swapped out the similar pre-choruses since the ones on Our Day Will Come were just more clean and simple. From there, the pre-chorus lyrics were modified and mostly worked.
A couple of weeks ago, it dawned on me that these new lyrics will likely be placed after something with a similar bridge/outro that’s being worked on. Not being married to the old bridge anymore, I decided to build up something new instead. Because of this, I’ve been stuck in editing purgatory on Stranger Days ever since.
So I had another go at it this afternoon. It’s not that it isn’t getting better, the lyrics are just like one of those tedious jigsaw puzzles that take forever to complete. I totally rewrote the second pre-chorus and still want to take another pass at the second verse. The new bridge is halfway done and there are only three more lines I have to figure out there. Now other parts of it are in the tweaking stage: “Do I use the word ‘last’ or ‘more’ here?” That’s not an exaggeration either, stuff gets that granular sometimes.
So we’ll see where it goes. These lyrics are the only ones I’m counting on for the grouping that aren’t in the buff and shine phase of editing. This makes them the priority right now.