Singled Out: Harper Blynn's This Is It

When we were making this record with David Kahne, we would go out to dinner every night. It would be David, J.Blynn, and me (Pete). One of the topics that we kept coming back to was artists and how they so often end up in a tragic spot. He's worked with a lot of them in varying degrees. Jeff Buckley, Sublime, Chris Whitley. The list goes on. David thought this had something to do with a songwriter writing a hit, then not wanting the world to know their secret. Somewhere in the DNA of a hit song is a special secret that resonates with the masses. Once everyone knows it, it's not your own anymore. It doesn't belong to you, the songwriter. The hit off of "Grace" was omitted because Jeff said it made him vomit to listen to it. "Forget Her" it's called. Anyway.

I'm not saying that "This Is It" is necessarily a hit. But I am saying that I don't want to tell my secret.

What I will say is that I wrote this in my very small apartment in the East Village, and that I probably had rats at the time and didn't realize it. This song was written not for someone, but to them. This song was meant to inspire action - telling someone in no uncertain terms to change their life. And why not just go ahead and do it NOW, because if you don't change something that you know is wrong immediately, you may never do it at all. That's the danger of inertia.

Also, I will add that there is no better way to finish a song than for it to be something important that you actually want to say TO someone.