Response to Mark Fisher's appeal for songs inspired by themes of tracks on XTC's 1982 album English Settlement, on his podcast What Do You Call That Noise? Inspired by the Andy Partridge song No Thugs In Our House: the main character in the song is a young Asian-beating National Front thug. As Nigel Fielding mentions in his assessment of the song in the podcast, this was a few years into Thatcher's reign, and the UK youth was damagingly polarised: while the NF was calling for immigrants to be repatriated, some of us were mobilised by music, social conscience and community, to fight back - the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism wars - Red Wedge, and CND. The badge and music said 'I don't care', but we clearly did care, a lot. Where are the latter-day veterans now? I'd like to think the punk spirit lives on in 2022 in suburbia micro-gestures such as leaving the hedge uncut, and wearing the old badges.

Lyrics:

I leave my hedge uncut, and, you know, I don't care;
I'll let my toffee-nosey neighbours stare.
Read the badge my generation wears...

I found it in my pocket,
Thankful I've still got it.

They would sneer and tut and just because we were young;
The way our hair was cut just told them we were wrong.
The snotty songs my generation sung...

Well, I still wear the t-shirt, 
Of every bloodied hurt 
And I still fight my battles 'cos they're still not won.

Our grandads fought the hun forty years before;
And still in '81, it was the same old war. 
The battle scars my generation bore...

The boots of every woman,
Who marched on Greenham Common
The uniforms my generation wore.

Mass intimidation in red, white and blue;
Repatriate the Asians and Jamaicans too.
The beatings that my generation knew...

I'll find my donkey jacket,
And pin my badge back on it,
And if they want to stop it, there's nothing they can do.

I'm thankful I've still got it -
Found it in my closet;
And forty years on we have to see it through.

Still Got It

This song is the third and final part of "the summer trilogy" on "Daydreams".

After the sugar-sweet beginning rush of "Overdrive" and the dark clouds heartbreak of "House of Cards", we arrive at "The Story of You and Me" in August. This song represents a true appreciation for the relationship as a whole. It reflects on the journey of the summer, expressing fondness for the golden, halcyon days in June and gratitude for the lessons in heartbreak in July. There is no yearning and no bitterness. No regret and no one to blame.

It's all just part of the story.

Daydreams

The Story of You and Me

The final track on Daydreams. I'm a big believer in ending albums on a positive note in one way or another and this is perhaps one of the warmest, most romantic songs I've written. I wanted this song to sound like what I imagine soulmates would feel like. 

It's one of the oldest songs on the album, written back in 2018 when I was 16. Back then I was going through a real phase of writing songs with only one or two lines in the chorus lol.

I've always had a clear image attached to this song in my mind: two people sitting side by side under a star-filled sky in the middle of nowhere (there's also maybe some Northern Lights?). To me, that image denotes absolute peace and contentment, which is the emotion I tried to express in this song. With that in mind, I knew I wanted this song to sound open, calm and spacey. 

I described this song as romantic, but in truth, I wrote this song with friendship in mind as well. I don't believe the word "soulmates" should be limited to describing only romantic love. This song is simply about feeling loved, safe, warm, content and at peace...a lovely note on which to end an album, if I do say so myself.

The Forever Kind

"Overdrive" is the first instalment in what I have found myself calling "the summer trilogy".
This is a trio of songs making up tracks 6, 7 and 8 of the album. They tell the story of a whirlwind relationship at three key points, over the course of the three months of summer. 

"Overdrive", track 6, takes place in June when the young couple first meets. There is an instant spark and both characters dive in headfirst, pedal to the floor, not caring to stop and think, so lost are they in the giddiness of young love. But there is a recklessness to this firework love, the consequences of which are felt in the track that follows ("House of Cards"). 

At some points in "Overdrive", there is an awareness of the chaotic nature of the relationship which has started and gained pace so quickly. There are defiant moments in lyrics such as "if this is going down, then let me fall like this forever" and a desperate kind of hopefulness at the end of every chorus in the phrase "maybe we'll find forever as we go".  The characters are scared of how quickly everything is happening but the adrenaline of it all makes the fear easy to brush aside. 

And the conflicting feelings of fear and optimism are not one-sided. I wanted it to be clear in the song that despite the suddenness of it all, there are real feelings of care from both sides of this relationship, shown in lyrics such as "you put your shaking hand in mine, and somehow made me feel alright". They are scared but they are united.

I'm proud of the juxtapositions in this song - it's fearful yet hopeful, chaotic yet genuine. It's easy to roll your eyes at the youthful naivety expressed in "even though it's only been a week or two, I'm starting to build my life around you" but I find it hard not to be moved by heartfelt declarations like "I don't think I've ever wished this hard for things to stay the way they are".  

Sonically, I knew the song had to be bright and upbeat to capture the feeling of young summer love. The verses have a sweetness to them, while the grungy guitars in the chorus added an edgier sound, representing the more chaotic side to the relationship.  

Lastly, I'd like to clarify that these lyrics are written on an entirely FICTIONAL premise, as opposed to personal - I have never actually been told I look like Stevie Nicks lol :))

Overdrive

This song is part two of "the summer trilogy".

After the honeymoon period in "Overdrive", this is where it all comes crashing down. Set in July, this song is about first heartbreak, frustration and loss. The persona is grieving for the relationship that has fallen apart as swiftly as it began. They are caught between stubbornly believing it was the realest thing they've ever felt and realising that the whirlwind nature of the romance means it was never built to last.

All the while, they're dealing with comments from people who assume, because of the shortness of the relationship, that it will be easy to move on from.

I think this is one of, if not my favourite song on the album. I love the melancholy that permeates the melody as well as the lyrics. I love how it feels like one final desperate reach for something already lost. I love the quiet sadness interspersed with flashes of anger. For me, it represents the tumult that is heartbreak, especially at a young age.

House of Cards

This song walks a fine line between bemused indifference and genuine frustration and disappointment. It's essentially about being ghosted by someone who seemed at first to be the more invested one in the relationship. As a result, there's an internal conflict between a sort of detached confusion and genuine hurt.

I knew I wanted this song to be upbeat and fun, and for the most part it is. However, as is typical of my writing, there is an underlying sadness that becomes especially evident in the outro, and in one of the most simple lyrics recurring throughout the song: "I waited and waited".

Truth Be Told

The penultimate song on the album is actually the oldest one. 

I wrote this back in 2017 when I was 15 - we were studying the poet Carol Ann Duffy in English class and I became really inspired by one of the lines in "Mrs Midas", a poem written from the perspective of the wife of King Midas from Greek mythology: "I think of him in certain lights, dawn, late afternoon // and once a bowl of apples stopped me dead." In the poem, this refers to the fact that Mrs Midas can never see the colour of gold in the same way again, after what happened to her husband. But I loved this way of describing how mundane, everyday objects and occurrences can become so much more poignant once they have memories attached to them. In turn, this inspired the first verse and refrain of the song: "So I think of you in that evening light, still think of us when the day meets the night."

I remember writing the song fairly quickly but feeling as though it was unfinished since it didn't have a bridge or even really a chorus...it was just three simple verses and a couplet of lines making up the refrain. For years, I kept the song in my notes, thinking that surely one day I'll be inspired to write the rest of it. However, after a while, I realised that I was so happy with what I had already written that anything else I added was probably going to pale in comparison. I realised I shouldn't be forcing myself to "finish" it just for the sake of following the regular format of a pop song. I was happy with what I had, so why mess with that?

That's why, all these years later, it has ended up on this album - although it is the oldest song on the tracklist, it's only recently that I have begun to feel content with it. 

I have never imagined this song to have heavy instrumentation or production - I wanted it to feel real and organic. So when it came to recording it, I sat down in the hallway of my flat and recorded the whole thing, guitar and vocals, in one take. Afterwards, I went back and added the vocals that you hear singing the "ah ah ahs" in between verses.

When the Day Meets the Night

OKAY. There's rather a lot of context to this song hehe.

I wrote this song in a bit of a frenzy after watching the series finale of the ITV show "Endeavour". The emotion of it all lingered after I had switched off the TV - I couldn't shake off what I had just watched. I felt this need for an outlet, otherwise I just wasn't going to be able to sleep. I opened my laptop to start writing and this is where Gracie Abrams came in.

At this time, I had recently listened to Gracie Abram's album "Good Riddance" for the first time and I was feeling really inspired by that indie, acoustic sound. Particularly with songs like "I should hate you" and "I know it won't work", I had been taken in by the sad desperation conveyed lyrically and sonically. I wanted to write a song that recreated that sensation.

Once I had opened my laptop, I spent half an hour or so furiously typing and by the end I had the bones of the song. I went back the next day and edited, shifted things around so there was more of a flow, and I was able to write a more continuous melody around that.

This is one of my favourites on the album and I owe a lot of that to Gracie Abrams, Aaron Dessner and the makers of "Endeavour" who provided the inspiration for it!

Joan

I was inspired to write this song as I was struck one day by the connotations that hands have in the English language. They are a metaphor for power, control and responsibility, as in phrases such as something being "in your hands" or to "wash your hands" of a situation. However, it occurred to me that when hands are mentioned in love songs, they usually denote romance, sensuality and tactility. These two meanings provided the inspiration for the chorus and bridge of the song, in which the symbolism of hands chops and changes between romantic ("in my hair, on my waist") and a dangerous sense of control ("your hands held me down"). 

It was after writing the chorus, and specifically the lines about being held underwater, that I wrote the rest of the song using imagery of water and the ocean. I think I've always had a bit of a fascination with the ocean and I've found it to be a really rich source of imagery while songwriting. I love the way it can be both frightening and calming, in the same way that hands can be threatening or comforting.

The themes of power and responsibility crops up again in lyrics such as "well, I guess it's my fault after all", "I should have known" and "my head tells my beaten heart, "well, I told you so"". In amongst all the blame being placed on the other person, there is also blame put on the self. They are acknowledging that they had the power to put a stop to it and prevent the situation from becoming so bad, but repeatedly chose not to because their heart wanted to believe the best in the other person. They didn't utilise the power that was in their hands.

The Deep

This is possibly the most "daydream-y" song on the album, in that the whole basis of the song is about wondering what it must be like to be in love.

Back in 2020, I was walking up a hill and when I turned round to look at the view, I saw a couple sitting on a picnic blanket admiring the view along with me.  I just remember thinking they looked very at home with each other, and they were doing all kinds of cutesy couple stuff. Like when one of them stood up to leave and the other pulled them back down into a hug. 

I was immediately inspired to write about them from my perspective as an outsider looking in. The song evolved into expressing a desire to feel seen that I think is more common than many would care to admit. Doing so would likely come with a feeling of guilt at the implication that you need a romantic partner to feel "whole". I don't believe this is the case but that belief can coexist with occasional feelings of loneliness - the two are not mutually exclusive. 

And yes, I did deliberately put this song as track two hehe.

For Two

This is the first song on Daydreams. Rather fitting considering it contains the phrase that inspired the album title: "we meet again in daydreams."

The idea for this song stemmed from me being struck by the strangeness of breakups. Out of the blue, it occurred to me how *weird* the idea was of knowing someone so intimately and completely at one time in your life and then in a matter of months, weeks, days, you can find yourself acting like strangers. Your lives which were once so intertwined are now so apart, as though the time you spent together never even happened. But it DID happen - because, like or not, you're still carrying around everything you knew about that person and vice versa. You may be acting like strangers but you're really, really not.

While writing this song, I was intentional about not placing blame on anyone. This was not written as a "I'm-heartbroken-after-what-you-did-to-me" breakup song, nor as a "I'm-sorry-for-what-I-did-to-you" breakup song. I was careful that there was no indication anywhere in the lyrics as to what caused the breakup. Instead, I wanted the focus to be solely on living and dealing with the memories after it happened.

The songs on Daydreams range from being written several years to several months ago - however, I consider writing TWOY (in 2020) to be the true beginning of the album. Until this point, I had only ever written songs as individual pieces of work, rather than as contributions to a project. But with this one, I really felt like it belonged on an album, like it was one jigsaw piece belonging to a bigger picture.

This song also acted as proof to myself that I could write something where I was equally proud of the melody AND the lyrics, something which I had previously struggled to accomplish. I could so clearly hear the song as I was writing, I just knew what it was meant to sound like. So it was an easy choice to start the process of recording and producing the album. Listening back to it, you can definitely tell it was my first time using GarageBand lol but I've grown fond of its imperfections in a way :))

The Weight of You

Ridiculously under-publicised due to lack of effort on his part, and criminally under-listened to due to lack of effort on everybody else's part, Boy:48 is an Edinburgh 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 graphic designer and married father of two who likes to write, make, record, produce and publish music when he can. His SoundCloud page has over 250 tracks on it, dating from ancient lo-fi tape demos from 1988, to regular releases as they are finished, at the rate of one or two a month. Thirteenth collection of demo's, 'Scatterling', released in December 2015, followed by double-collection Matryoshka (late 2017) and Krokodyl (early 2018). There followed a period of fulsome activity resulting in the OZALID and Dream, Daedalus albums, and while beginning his Sleepshow collection, lockdown struck and he walloped 26 tracks in just 6 months - one a week, resulting in much slapdash work. 2021 saw a return to normal with the completion of Sleepshow in March, and Ink Traps in December. 2022 saw his collection FASH completed, and its follow-up, DWAM, was completed in the second half of 2023. March-April 2024 have thus far seen the addition of six new tracks. Be advised that all the stuff is demo's - that means they are there to showcase, or give an impression of, what a piece could sound like. But they've not been done by professionals, nor in ideal recording conditions, so all sorts of qualities, details, dynamics etc. will not be the best possible. So think of them as worked-up sketches, rather than studio-made productions. All of them are AMDG - Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam: To the Greater Glory of God.

Still Got It

Boy:48

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