I’m happy to present to you a song from Ben Shive’s upcoming The Ill-Tempered Klavier. The album is nearing completion, and “S” is next in line for the song of the day, so Ben agreed to let us post this one. It’s called ’97, a song about the year his older brother went away to college. Beautiful, sad, and melodic, oh my.
97 Words and Music by Ben Shive
The year my brother went away The song got sad And I woke up one day Feeling so funny I forgot to laugh
Like I was all up in my head With no way out And sad for nothing, just sad Every day was down
It happened overnight
The flier on the wall said: Do you feel nothing at all? And do you wonder if you’re even real?
Well my feelings exactly ‘Cause where was the old me Who used to be happy Who used to think he was okay?
It happened overnight
And a little girl was taken We tied a ribbon around the tree And the search went on for ages While the search went on for me
And I thought about her mother There was nothing she could do Cause she couldn’t go back and she couldn’t go on And God only knew where her baby had gone
The year my brother went away And the song got sad Everything changed And we could never go back
Yeah, everything changes, everything dies The year my brother went away It happened overnight