VIDEO:

SONG LORE

Writing Process

This song started a few years ago. Originally called “WHEN THE devil CALLS”, but then I changed it to be titled “Beautiful, Terrible” (same as the album title) since it mentions that line in there. As the song has taken form and as the concept of the album has taken shape, it’s slowly morphed to it’s current state and I decided to go ahead and call it by its original title “When the devil Calls”. The lyrics have changed over time too if you’ve been following this page they used to read differently. Finally when I went to go record vocals, I didn’t even look at all my notes I had written down for the lyrics, I just sang whatever came out in the recording session, whatever felt right. That caused several of the lyrics to be tweaked from what I original had.

Originally I wrote the verses and choruses first. The melody came at the same time as the chord progressions. Then the lyrics started following afterwards. I hashed thru an idea with the bridge that I didn’t like and then put this song on the back-burner for a few years and let it sit.

I knew I wanted this song to be on this album, but the writer’s block on the bridge was making it difficult to want to finish the song. Then one weekend it hit me like a “terrible” ton of bricks. I wanted the song to get real DARK (representing the “terrible”). As I started hashing out different chord progressions I kept finding myself changing keys and wanting to go to different places melodically with the vocals. Ultimately, the vocal melodies I was hearing in my head were what dictated the key changes and seemingly very different chord changes. Before I knew it, I had a complete bridge section that really moved all over the place. The bridge vocals start low and gradually ascend upwards with every line changing keys along the way until I’m almost scream-singing the last phrases of the bridge in a higher vocal register. Then I don’t know how, but I somehow land back in the original key the song started in haha!

Isn’t life kinda like that? For me it is at least lol… sometimes going on these huge mental rabbit holes of thinking/belief systems, exploring concepts in life until by the end of it I’m right back where I started. Hmm… so fascinating the song turned out that way too!

Song Meaning

I delve a little bit into this song’s overall meaning and how it parallels with the album’s overall meaning in this Studio Journal here.

For the bridge though, I really wanted to delve into feelings I had when I was a kid. I had the worst night terrors. They were so bad that I would sleep walk and freak out my parents lol. I remember feeling this overwhelming dark feeling during these night terrors. Some people say that kids grow out of night terrors, but to be honest? I never really grew out of them… I only learned how to wake myself up from them once I felt them coming on. Even as an adult I still have sleeps where I am consciously awake in my dream, and I can feel the night terror coming on. In those moments I wake myself up. It’s the same dark feeling. I tried to capture that in this bridge section of this song.

What do these night terrors mean? I have no clue. Lately I’ve been trying to “stay” in them though. Instead of waking myself up, I’ve been trying to consciously bring love and light into them by embracing the dark feelings and inviting in light and love to balance out whatever is going on. I’ve been staying in them a bit longer lately, but it still gets to a point that I naturally wake up from them.

Anyway, might sound super crazy! But that’s what that part of this song is about! Ultimately and overall I think this song is really about exploring the darker parts of self, calling them “the devil” only to realize that those darker parts aren’t the devil at all, just the shadow side of self that has been ignored and unloved for so long.