Imagine a big musical number. Now remove all of the instruments and professional singers, keeping only a piano and Chris. Now make sure that the piano playing is sloppy and that Chris has a sore throat, and that he started recording this with no idea where it was going, and was slightly drunk. Ok, go:

Song

 Too late to celebrate [4:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Discussion

CHRIS: Yeah, I hated recording this song. First I did the piano part and finished it all off before I had any ideas for lyrics or even melody. And it was inflexible because of the tempo changes which I’d already programmed into the recording software and didn’t want to change.

Then I started in on the vocals but my computer was being a real jerk, so it would only let me record a phrase or two at a time. That’s pretty challenging with a song like this… you want to get into the mood and lose yourself in the vocal performance, but every few phrases you have to bend over and hit “record” again and start singing where you left off. And my throat was sore and my voice was getting weaker with every take. And I thought I’d be able to quantize the piano part but there were too many triplets so that wasn’t working either.

Anyway, given all that I thought I’d hate this but I end up liking it. I wish it had more voices and built with more instrumentation like strings and maybe some big booming drums. I like big booming drums. But that’s why they don’t call it 52 amazingly polished studio recordings project.

Lyrics

The difference is I love you
The difference is I miss you
The different part of me

Would have played this different
So I could make you feel that
That I’m sorry

But it’s too late to celebrate

You’re calling out my weakness
The thing that’s come between us
Dangling in the dark

You see through me, I plead “stay”
You use emotive x-ray
We can’t get out of park

It’s too late to celebrate

I’d love to see you on your own you
I love to tell you that I told you
I’d love to love you if I could

But you had it and you lost it
Had your chance but never fought it
I’d love to love you if I could

You called out my weakness
I think that’s just what I need it’s
What I’d never find again

Now I realize what’s between us
What I stand to lose I see it’s
What I’d never find again

It’s too late to celebrate

Credits

Words and Music: Chris Tindal
Chris Tindal: Piano and vocals
Steve Salt: I think your last song sounded like MGMT