Our latest song isn’t about what you think it’s about.

We’re often asked how we choose the songs we cover. You may have noticed we don’t just choose whatever is “hottest” on the charts. Most of those songs wouldn’t pass our “can my kid watch or sing this” test anyway. :-) It’s hard to explain, but it’s kind of a spiritual thing. We don’t choose the songs, the songs choose us. Sometimes the reasons aren’t entirely clear, and sometimes they are as unambiguous as a pop song chord progression.

This one grabbed us. Yes, we love Lewis Capaldi. We love his unassuming, atypical nature, his gravelly vocals, and his heart that lends personal power to his music. We just loved this melody and everything about the emotionality of this tune. It wasn’t until later in our arranging process that we discovered the true meaning behind Lewis’ lyrics. At first listen we thought, perhaps like many of you, the words were pleadings after a bad breakup wondering whether there was something that could have been said that might have saved the relationship.

But that’s not it at all.

Lewis wrote it to emotionally process the death of his aunt, who ended her own life. If you’re reading this, maybe you’ve been through this -- a loved one, someone close, dying by suicide. It is something that is inexplicably impossible to deal with. No one can conceive of this struggle unless you’ve been through it -- like being part of a club that no one wants to be in. Your emotions get all tangled up with each other. You experience not just sadness and remorse, but also anger -- at your loved one, at yourself, at the world or an environment or culture. You look for blame, even though you don’t want to; blame that stems from a gap between understanding and misunderstanding that seems abysmal and hopeless to bridge; blame that often lands back in your own lap, where it doesn’t belong but where it comes when there’s nowhere else to go. You can hear this in Lewis’ lyrics:

“Before you go, was there something I could've said to make your heart beat better?

If only I'd have known you had a storm to weather

So, before you go

Was there something I could've said to make it all stop hurting?

It kills me how your mind can make you feel so worthless."

We’ve personally experienced these feelings very poignantly. These dark thoughts come to your doorstep and you know you shouldn’t let them in, and yet you entertain them. You let them sit in your mind and put their feet up as you try to process and figure out what you could have done better. In self-defense we even sometimes defer them into blaming our loved one.

We wonder if their poor choices led to their challenges.

But perhaps we should wonder if their challenges led to their poor choices instead.

Suicide should be prevented at all costs. We as a human family should strive to be more aware of silent struggle in others with all our might.

If you are struggling and considering suicide as an option to ease your pain or dispel your darkness, know that your presence is priceless -- worth infinitely more than your absence. Watch the sunrise every day you can and consider it a symbol of your total reset, a “do-over,” a second chance to start again. See it as light that breaks through the night. Yes, night will come again. And again. But so does the sunrise. It always will. And which one is more beautiful? More powerful? More present? More like who you really are inside?

For those of you, like us, that have felt this loss and this confusion, there is still hope. Hope that one day all things will be made right. Hope that, as mental illness inhibitions somehow are stripped away in the next life, challenging barriers can crumble away too and allow for light to enter where darkness was before. There is hope for reconciliation, healing, and for love to completely smother self-loathing.

We believe in second chances. And third and fourth and fifth. For everyone.

That’s what we hope this instrumental version of this tune feels like to you.

If you are hurting, wondering, blaming, searching, praying, hoping against hope, this song is for you.

With love,

The Piano Guys