Creating Set the World Alight

Set the World Alight - 28th November 2024 

I would consider that I have had two significant stints in the music world. My formative musical years, from 1996 to 2002, and from 2020 onwards. The eighteen years between those two periods I didn't play much. I might pull out the acoustic guitar and go through some of the songs I used to sing (Norwegian Wood, American Pie, Like a Rolling Stone, the themes from Scrubs and Cheers, and many others), and there was even a year or two when I played guitar at a local toddler group that I ended up running (and that actually led to me getting my current job as a planetarium presenter!)

When I did pull out the acoustic at home, I'd also play bits from my own musical past, such as the riff from Upon Us, You Decide, and a few other odd chord progressions I'd come up with. The chord progression for Set the World Alight was one of these. I never had an idea for a song, but the whole progression from the verse into the chorus was locked down from the day I came up with it and even though I never did write this one down, it always just stuck with me.

Early on in Storm of Crows, I played it for Jimmy and he did what he always does, banged out a full set of lyrics in about ten minutes. It was a song called Here We Go Again (notice how it's exactly the same syllables and phrasing to Set the World Alight?) It was a heavily autobiographical song about our lives as middle-aged musicians coming back together after years; our exact story.

Click to see the lyrics for Here We Go Again

[Verse 1]

It's been far too long since we've been back here you know

Far too long since we've all put on a show

But we're here now, not yet quite over the hill

What the hell, it feels good and I'm smiling still

[Chorus]

Here we go again

Grab your stuff my friend

Time to make our stand

Over and over again

Here we go again

Grab your stuff my friend

Time to make a stand

Here we go again

[Verse 2]

Losing hair or gaining where it shouldn't be

Put on weight, eyesight failing tragically

Kids, house, job, debt no ego left for you see 

Now hip deep with responsibility

[Chorus]

Here we go again

Grab your stuff my friend

Time to make our stand

over and over again

Here we go again

Grab your stuff my friend

Time to make a stand

Here we go again

[Verse 3]

Don't care though, find comfort in our broken skin

Not stars no, enjoying for the sake of it

We're still here, jamming with the rest of you

We're still here, happy and we're pushing through

[Chorus]

Here we go again

Grab your stuff my friend

Time to make our stand

over and over again

Here we go again

Grab your stuff my friend

Time to make a stand

Here we go again

I thought it sounded great, and we planned to each take a verse, and all share various lines of the chorus. We never nailed it down exactly, as Paul ended up not being keen on the lyrics, and it was consigned to the vault, with the potential for resurrection on album number two.

Fast forward to November 2024, I only need four more songs to finish the album, and I'm starting to struggle as to where they're going to come from. I remembered Here We Go Again, and the fact that while Jimmy wrote the lyrics, he didn't write the music, so I could still use that for my album that was supposed to be 100% me.

Strangely, the second set of lyrics set to this music ended up being entirely autobiographical as well. I've written about my life and as it's exactly how my life went up to this point, it took me no time at all to write it.

The pieces all fell into place quite quickly, recording vocals, harmonies, electric guitar rhythm and so on. But I did end up taking a few weeks away from the song to work on Your Place in Time. I guess inspiration hit and that song required a lot more working than this one did. Set the World Alight wasn't going anywhere, and wouldn't suffer if I put it on the back burner for a while.

When I came back to it, I did have one problem to fix. A line in the second verse irked me, and I had left it in as a placeholder, which usually meant that it would stick that way for ever, but not this time. The line was:

With my friends, playing over the garage, we'd be

Try and sing it along to the music. It's just clunky and awkward. In the end I re-wrote it to:

With my friends, jamming and writing a song or three

We still were in a room above the garage. I was just no longer mentioning it. If you're interested, the room can be seen her on the right. Strangely, I no longer own a single guitar or amplifier that you can see in those photos. Most of them were sold so I could buy a Gibson ES-335 (and that I still have).

Recording that drop in was the last job for this song before mixing and mastering, so all in all it was pretty simple, though it did still begin its life four years earlier with Storm of Crows, and actually probably over a decade before that with me just kicking it about on the guitar. It's amazing how often and how far a songwriter may reach back for inspiration.