Unfinished Song – Story Behind the Song

Loss of inspiration is one of the worst moments for a songwriter. I’ve experienced it a few times. That feeling is empty and strange when you’ve got used to musical ideas spinning around your head almost incessantly. Of course, most of those ideas are completely useless, but the silence, which comes when the ideas stop coming, is intolerable – for me at least. When the inspiration returns, however, is very exhilarating moment. Often the dry season is ended by some new and fascinating experience; sometimes it’s an event which leaves a mark on your soul. Generally speaking (life) experiences have big importance on the birth of inspiration. Without experiences, adventures, setbacks and disappointments it’s hardly possible to have inspiration either, since you don’t have emotional responses from where to draw energy for it. And not everything has to be spectacular; often in small moments lies the seed of great inspiration. I’ve come across these kinds of moments e.g. while watching a movie or reading a snippet of a sentence. But mainly life experiences are the bubbling well from where I draw my inspiration. This is why the ‘Unfinished Song’ urges you to seize the moment; boldly gain a variety of experiences and be open-minded and you may see something progressive, new and beautiful…or old, regressive and ugly. All of these, however, can spark inspiration to make something new, be it music, painting, writing, or views on how the world could be made better. The song of each of us is still unfinished; it only becomes finished in death. And the songs of some of us are still remembered even after death.

Hewey – Fragile Dream

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Only Love Can Win – Biisin tarina

Only Love Can Win on kaikkein henkilökohtaisin biisi tällä levyllä. Minulla oli elämässäni varsin vaikea ajanjakso 2000-luvun puolivälissä, jolloin koin sekä henkilökohtaisia että perheeseeni liittyviä vastoinkäymisiä. Koin sekä parisuhteeseen, perheeseen että musiikkiharrastukseni liittyviä takaiskuja. Toki sain tuona ajanjaksona opintoni valmiiksi, mutta en itseäni tyydyttyvällä tavalla, ja opintojen jälkeen työnsaanti osoittautui vaikeammaksi kuin olin kuvitellut. Jossain vaiheessa kuitenkin arki alkoi näyttää valoisammalta ja uudet musiikilliset ideat alkoivat jälleen soida päässäni. Tältä ajanjaksolta on myös peräisin Only Love Can Win. Sanoitusta en vielä tuolloin kuitenkaan saanut valmiiksi ja biisi jäi pöytälaatikkoon odottamaan tilaisuuttaan.

Muutama vuosi myöhemmin kävin läpi sekä tuota edellä mainittua vaikeaa ajanjaksoa että myös aiempia epäonnistumisiani elämässäni. Mietin, että minun olisi ollut helppo katkeroitua ja vajota synkkyyteen niiden edessä, mutta valitsin jostain syystä toisin: päätin uskaltaa luottaa positiivisuuteen ja empatiaan sekä rakkauteen. Olen ehkä loppujen lopuksi pohjimmiltani optimistinen ihminen. Näistä ajatuksista syntyi vihdoin sanat biisiin. Ne toimivat minulle muistutuksena siitä, että vaikka juuri sillä hetkellä asiat olisivatkin huonosti ja näköalat lohduttomia, tilanne voi muuttua jos vain jaksaa uskoa muutokseen ja tehdä sen eteen töitä. Ja ennen kaikkea, uskaltaa tukeutua ja luottaa läheisiin ihmisiin. Tästä luottamisesta ja hetkeen heittäytymisen tärkeydestä erityisenä muistutuksena minulle toimii biisin väliosan sanat, jotka vievät minut yli 20 vuoden takaisiin muistoihin. Ne liittyvät kahteen elokuvaan: Hiljaiset sillat ja Titanic sekä erääseen tyttöön jota tuolloin tapailin jonkin aikaa. En tuolloin uskaltanut olla avoin ja luottavainen, vaan olin varautunut ja yritin ottaa selvää tunteista järjen ja logiikan avulla. Yritin ikään kuin tunkea järjen nelikulmiota tunteen ympyrään, mikä oli tuomittu epäonnistumaan.

Äänitin Only Love Can Win:sta ensimmäisen demon vuonna 2011. Sen jälkeen biisi jäi pitkäksi aikaa unohduksiin, kunnes kohtasin taas uusia vaikeuksia, tällä kertaa oman terveyteni takia. Olin jälleen valintojen edessä: alistuako tilanteeseen ja jättää musiikki pois elämästäni, koska en enää pysty laulamaan ja esiintymään yhtä intensiivisesti kuin ennen. Vai purra hammasta ja taistella vastaan ja yrittää mukautua tilanteeseen siten, että voin jatkaa minulle rakkaan harrastuksen parissa niin kauan kuin mahdollista. Only Love Can Win palautui jälleen mieleeni ja tiesin, että jälkimmäinen vaihtoehto on minun valintani. Siksi halusin biisin mukaan levylle. Vaikka Only Love Can Win on kovin henkilökohtainen biisi, sen viesti toimii myös yleisemmällä tasolla, kun kohtaamme ihmiskuntana juuri nyt varsin pahoja vastoinkäymisiä. Yhteistyöllä ja luottamuksella, sekä empatialla ja rakkaudella pystymme yhdessä kamppailemaan ongelmia vastaan paremmin kuin eristäytymisellä, katkeruudella ja vihalla.

Hewey – Fragile Dream

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Only Love Can Win – Story Behind the Song

Only Love Can Win is the most personal song on the album. I had a quite difficult period in my life around mid-2000s when I had setbacks in my relationship, music hobby, and family. I graduated at that time, of course, but not in a way that satisfied me; and getting a job proved to be much more difficult I had expected. At some point in time, however, everyday life began to look brighter and new musical ideas started to play in my head again. Only Love Can Win is from this period. I didn’t get the lyrics done yet, however, and the song stayed in the drawer waiting its turn.

A few years later I was going through both the aforementioned period and earlier failures in my life. I  thought it would have been easy for me to become embittered and fall into gloom. But for some reason I chose differently: I decided to have faith in positivity, empathy and love. I guess I am an optimist at heart. From these thoughts the lyrics to Only Love Can Win were born. For me , they work as a reminder that, even though at that particular time, things look bad and even hopeless, they can change if you just believe in that change and work for it. And, most of all, you have the courage to trust the people closest to you. A special reminder for me about the importance of trust and courage to seize the moment are the lyrics in the middle-eight. They take me back to memories more than 20 years ago. They are intertwined to two movies: Bridges of Madison County and Titanic, and to a girl I was seeing that time. I was reserved and didn’t have the courage to trust my feelings; instead I tried to process my feelings with logic – it was like trying to shoehorn a square peg of logic into the round hole of emotion – doomed to failure. The first demo of Only Love Can Win I recorded in 2011. After that, I forgot about the song for a long time until I was again faced with hardship, this time because of my own health. I had again to make decisions: do I submit and leave music out of my life because I no longer can sing and perform as intensively as before; or do I bite my lip and fight and adapt so that I can continue as long as possible with the hobby so dear to me. I remembered Only Love Can Win again, and knew the latter was the right choice for me. This is why I wanted the song to feature on this album. And, even though Only Love Can Win is very personal song, its message works on more general level as we as humankind face very grave adversities right now. With cooperation, trust, empathy and love we can fight and overcome the problems we are facing better than with isolation, bitterness and hate

Hewey – Fragile Dream

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Dance While the World Is Burning – Story Behind the Song

Originally I wrote Dance While the World Is Burning for my stepson who had at that time many difficulties in his life. I felt he wanted to escape his problems instead of facing and solving them. From my own experiences I knew that you can’t solve anything by escaping; problems only get worse. And they won’t disappear at once, either. You have to take small steps forward because too big leaps can dispirit you right from the start. Small changes and steps forward give you strength and faith in achieving your ultimate goal: impossible becomes achievable.

I realised soon after writing the lyrics that this song isn’t solely about my stepson. It’s about the whole generation of his. We older generations have failed them by our greed and neglect, leaving them to fix the mess we’ve made, e.g. climate catastrophe. They don’t have the ‘luxury’ of being careless, no matter how those problems cause anxiety, and no matter how much they would like to forget everything and be as careless as their parents and grandparents are. Their task is to educate us and demand us to help save their future and the one of this planet. Again, the change takes place in small steps, and everyone – no matter how small and insignificant they feel – can make a difference with their own contribution and example. Look at Greta Thunberg, for example. A protest of one girl has grown to a worldwide movement of activists!

Hewey – Fragile Dream

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Cherry Lips – Story Behind the Song

Often inspiration comes to me in very peculiar situations. I got the idea of Cherry Lips in a movie theatre when I was watching The American Reunion with my fiancée. Although that series of movies is pretty basic American fuss, it’s still funny and in some way nostalgic to me. Perhaps, in some parallel universe, those movies would tell about my youth. Anyway, I sat there watching the movie and in my mind travelled back to my own youth; to the fun trips, parties and blunders with friends, and my first crushes. I felt I was almost dreaming and that’s when the melody started playing in my head. I subconsciously noticed the dress my fiancée was wearing; its base colour of sand dunes with cherries on it. Suddenly in my imagination I was in the desert under the red hot sunshine, and that image of me had an image of cherry lips which help the thirsty wanderer onwards in the hot desert. So, eventually, the melody that originated in comedy ended up with a completely different mental landscape and mood with its lyrics. Mind is a funny ‘creature’ at times.

We rearranged Cherry Lips in the studio with the sound engineer/mixing engineer/producer Heikki Marttila. This new version took the song even more to the desert, to delirious, nearly western-like atmosphere. It actually took on a new dimension, which makes it much better suited to the overall theme of the album. Now there are among the delirious wandering elements of hopeful dreaming of finding a safe oasis. Now, in my imagination, the wanderer walks in the destroyed world in search of a new place where to make a fresh start, and where those cherry lips quench his thirst; a place where it’s good to be.

Hewey – Fragile Dream

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Flower – Story Behind the Song

Flower is – along ’The First Blood of War’ – the oldest song on this album. I wrote the first version of it around the turn of the millennium but this newer version saw daylight in 2011. The song is about desire and if a certain thing is really worth pursuing, no matter how badly you want it. The inspiration for the song came from quite a surprising direction, as is very often the case with me. I heard a person I know had gone to work in the adult entertainment industry. I was confused and a little bit shocked but at the same time I was eager to know what the reasons behind her decision were. Was this exactly what she wanted from her life, or would life have something else to offer her? In retrospect, I can say that was just one stage in her life.

In the first version of ‘Flower’, the atmosphere was quite cold and distant. I imagined myself as a fly on the wall, but at the same time I was ashamed of my interest in this subject, so I distanced the narrator’s voice from it. For this newer version, I decided to change the lyrics and the atmosphere warmer and more intimate. I felt that if a person makes decisions of their own will, I can’t be cold and resentful. Instead I have to get inside into the person’s world of thought and approach the subject through it. I often try to add more than one layer to my lyrics. Thus, Flower also works on a more general level. Everyone is probably wondering at some point in their lives if at that very moment they have everything they want in their lives, or if life could offer something more after all – something else worth pursuing. Not necessarily, but you never know what to expect around the corner. But what I do know is that every decision or act you make or do leaves its mark on you and shapes you in a certain way.

Fragile Dream – Hewey

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