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BEHIND THE TRACKS: STAY

Time for a confession: this song is my 'Parachutes'. Not the Coldplay album, but the song.

I always wanted to have a small, lovely song that would ‘break’ the album, so to speak. Problem was, I have a lot of those songs. Not that I want to write them, but a lot of them are just songs that I start with, don’t finish, and store away to finish on another day. Most songs have a verse and chorus, but no second or third verses, and no bridge. Ergo: a lot of small (too lazy to finish) acoustic songs.

'Stay' was different, though. I wrote it as a love song you can sing to a lover after a fight. When I wrote the chorus, I knew I was done. Everything I could have added after that would have made the song weaker. Which is how I also knew that it would be the album breaker, and not use some half finished song in its place.

The verses are kind of bitter, an angry I-know-you-too-well story. I wanted the chorus to have a happier tone. Hope I succeeded.