22 was the first song of a new batch that I wrote for the Fairer Sea album. I'd done some recording in Belgium with some friends there and liked a few of the songs that resulted but decided I wanted to go for a more poppy, upbeat feel, so I set on writing some new stuff.

The song, like the rest of the album, focuses on a long distance relationship I was once in with a girl from New York. Even though it was long after the event, I'd never written about the situation we found ourselves in before so it was quite therapeutic and kinda lifted the curtain on a lot of stuff I'd kept hidden.

22 is about the way a long distance relationship heightens everything and causes you to make decisions that no couple who live just down the road from each other have to make, such as getting married after only 3 months of living together just to be able to stay in the same country.
Everything happens at triple the speed of most other romances and you end up sucking the romance out of the room by spending every second together because you don't know when you'll see other again.

My favourite line of the song and possibly on the album is " I'm never gonna fill this you shaped hole in my heart", kinda sums it all up for me and I wasn't kidding either! I'm good friends with the girl in question now ( she'll be embarrassed if she reads this ) but despite coming close a couple of times and trying really hard to force that same feeling I had with her into new romances, that hole is still empty.
If there are any ladies out there reading this who fancy trying to help me out with this in any way, that'd be great, thanks, just give me an email.

As for recording the song, I knew as soon as I'd written it that it would be an upbeat pop hit ( upbeat and pop anyway ) but it didn't really come together in the studio until our bass player Andy added a really cool bass part. This set in motion 'Hurricane' Joe Bennett to fly around the studio adding parts all over the shop, it was a sight to behold.

The title "22" isn't really related to the rest of the song, it just comes from a weird thing I have with seeing the number 22 quite a lot. I haven't figured out yet whether it's a good or bad number so I thought I'd cover my back and pay tribute by naming a song after it. At one point the album was going to be called "22" but then I thought, what if it's a bad number and I curse the whole thing?! so I just settled for a song instead. See, this is what you're missing out on ladies.....email me yeah?