Singled Out: Drew Holcomb And The Neighbors

The woman you love can drive you crazy. They are unpredictable, stop in you in tracks, make you wish you knew more about them. The best love songs revolve around a lyric that puts flesh on this idea.

I had the lyric, "You are a novel in a sea of magazines" floating around in my head for weeks. Magazines you flip through, you have briefly, then you throw them away. A novel you savor, you relish, you stay up at night thinking about. You might even re-read it and every time you find more complexities and nuances and character details that make you fall more in love with the story. A novel takes time, requires commitment. You don't just read a novel in a day. It surprises you, makes you lose your mind trying to know where the narrative is headed. A romantic love worth holding on to is like a novel, not a magazine. It's Steinbeck's East of Eden versus People magazine October 1989. Who remembers People Magazine October 1989? No one except the celebrity who made the cover. Who remembers East of Eden? Everyone who ever read it!

This feeling doesn't just apply to romance, it applies to every meaningful human interaction. We are all novels, in the process of being authored, by ourselves, by fate, by God, by community, by suffering, by happiness, and all the other experiences that drive our history. I wanted to write a song that has this mysterious joy to it. I wanted big drums, loud guitars, unadulterated shouting, and an ernest heart, that says, "yes, we all matter," especially that girl or boy you keeping thinking about every 15 minutes.