“We’re older and wiser, we could be much brighter”

Track 4 of the Bringing the Harvest Home Collection is the very upbeat Take This Smile. I wrote this as an exercise for my own amusement. I wanted to start each line of each verse with the same words and see where it took me. The music and melody came about very quickly but the chorus didn’t work with the lyrics I had written. Originally the second line of the chorus was “Don’t leave me cold with your stories of old”. One night I was playing around with it and realised it worked so much better with just “Don’t leave me cold”.

I wanted to go for a real late 70’s early 80’s post-punk/new wave feel for the recording and at one point I slowed it right down and tried for a similar feel to David Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes. This gave me the sound and feel for the bass guitar line and the offbeat snare, but you would never know.

The lead guitar solo at the end was a one-take jam made up on the spot and it really does take me back to the guitar bands of my youth.

I hope you like the energy in this track.

Stuart

Take This Smile HQ Audio download

Take This Smile

Take this smile, make it part of you

And my tears and all these foolish things

Take my heart, cause it beats for you

And my mind and all the foolish things I say

Cause I’m older and wiser, we can be much brighter

Don’t leave me cold

If he’s your hero, stand there beside him

Give him your love and don’t turn my way

I’ve got pride, it’s in my blood

I’ve got sadness, at all this madness

I’ve got hope, how it feeds my ambition

I’ve got my doubts, they always bring me down to earth

Right down

Give me love, if you think I deserve it

Give me your reasons, if you cast me aside

Give me the truth in a night of deception

Give me the light, and in the dark I can show you the way

Let me show you

Written and performed by Stuart James Wright