We both know love comes with conditions
Collusions, collisions, unplanned revisions
And small print.
Darling we’re no different,
It’s you and me or you and someone else.
Between the womb and the tomb
There’s not a lot of room
To be the people we want to be.
Now I’m all rage,
I’ve forgotten how to act my age
Everything is slipping away from me.
Baby, I am the man you’re holding on to right now
But tell me who is the man you’re holding on for?
I want to know more.
Joking apart, don’t you dare enjoy the start,
We need to save our smiles for the happy ending.
I’ve put myself through hell
But these thoughts won’t think themselves
And I’m wondering if you’re just pretending.
Now my inner child is watching
So I’ve put him up for adoption
Because I suspect he’s up to something really bad.
And you still give me chills
You’ve got me hooked through the gills
But love never stopped anyone feeling sad.
Baby, I am the man you’re holding on to right now
But tell me who is the man you’re holding on for?
I want to know more.
It’s just the echo of a memory
Of a shadow of a regret
And the regrets are all for things
I haven’t even done yet.
I’m just a privileged boy
Battling for his right to a little misery
Wishing you were kissing me
And wishing it meant more.
I am the man you’re holding on to right now
But tell me who is the man you’re holding on for?
The youngest song on the album, penned about a month before we started recording.
It’s always dangerous including something on a new release that hasn’t been gigged. Most songs do a bit of growing up on the road. The recording tends to be the last chapter in a song’s adolescence, not the first.
On the other hand, it’s the new material that makes a recording session interesting. Old songs often feel like ancient relatives to be pandered to, never taken by surprise. There is an exuberance that accompanies working on something new.
I Want To Know More is an odd song, musically. The groove is very simple, but the central sequence of notes in the intro and instrumental sections is actually quite complicated, folding over on itself in a curious way, there’s a sort of hiccup in the riff. I have something of a predilection for making easy things difficult.
Riffs aside, the guts of the song are firmly coloured by rock and roll. It also feels a little like car chase music. Essentially it’s a vehicle for my favourite kind of lyric – the up and down statement/question that sums up an entire relationship: “I am the man you’re holding on to… but who is the man you’re holding on for?”
Paranoid love songs are the most fun. Everything is turned inwards. Never more does one have less of a notion about who is the object of a sentiment. The problem here is not the wife/partner but the caustic imagination of the narrator.
