Friend of Heavy, sung by Shannon Marie Harney

 

We have released Friend of Heavy, sung by Shannon Marie Harney - track 9 of the incremental album, Harney sings O'Sullivan...

Friend of Heavy, lyric and melody by Patrick O'Sullivan...

Friend of Heavy, on YouTube...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzwXLdbKOoM

Friend of Heavy, on Spotify...

https://open.spotify.com/album/1P9UILvHsPOo9TeXfOfxh7?si=SPahCQakRZmJz2bEu3I3Lw

and, in due course, on every music platform...

1.

This song was sitting on the slipway, keel in place, with a partly built superstructure...

When Shannon Marie Harney decided she wanted to take it for a spin.  She said it matched her mood...

I like what we, myself, Shannon Marie Harney and Danny Yates, have done with this song...

2.

This is most probably the most Robert Browning of my recent lyrics.  It is is part of my exploration of repetition and pattern -  in life, in art, in music.

Like, What is the Chorus for?  How does the Chorus work?  If a song has a good Chorus, we would want to take it to a live audience.

But this grim song, with that relentless A Minor...?  Would that work?  So many popular songs try to be upbeat, uplifting.  Let us go in another direction.  Be not afraid.  Heightened emotion, yes, but the emotion is depression - what the psychiatrists call a flat affect.

Note the patterned language of the verses, and the simple pattern of the Chorus.

The verses sound as if they rhyme - but, technically, by definition, I think, they do not rhyme.  They pretend to rhyme.  In rhyme, the connecting words have the same end sound.  Here the same words are simply, obsessively, repeated:  meet, god, meet, god;  might, door, might, door.

The narrative is clear - the quarrel has been horrible, horrible.  Does the narrator really believe that being a Friend of Heavy is sufficient explanation or excuse?  And...  What does that mean...  to be a Friend Of Heavy?

3.

My original plan was that the chorus would become more and more complex, musically, as the song progressed.  Maybe a cornet solo? - but would a Yorkshire brass band really want to play this dour melody?  A male voice choir? - where could we find so many depressed men?  Yes, really bad ideas... We did bring in a bit of cello, just to fill that space...

In the end, Shannon Marie Harney brought lovely harmony ideas to the Choruses.  The melody lines become - not dour - but intense...  

The melody should be easy to play on a standard chromatic autoharp.  This is the Chordify link, so that you can see the chords in place...

https://chordify.net/chords/friend-of-heavy-shannon-marie-harney-topic

It is still...  a very strange song.  

So, Track 9.  9 tracks is an album?

Patrick O'Sullivan

March 2024