Berlin: Story

This song was once another song. And before that, it was another song. Truthfully, I have written at least 3 songs called Berlin, with different music, and different lyrics. This one is, by far, the best of the Berlins. It says what I always needed it to say.

Originally, one of the primary lyrics was “I dreamed a dream about Berlin.” This was because I did. I woke up, and wrote that line down, not so much in an inspired artistic moment, but more as a document of what happened while I was unconscious. There was obviously more to it than that, but it was a strange dream to have. It was a mood dream, if you know what I mean. And I wanted to capture that mood. That escape. In the end, the idea of escape, or of not being able to escape despite our best–and sometimes misguided–efforts, is what the “Berlin” you hear on the album is all about. It is–like a few of my songs–an appeal to someone who is in despair. There is no one person I was thinking of when writing this song, but rather, there were a few specific people. I’m not sure it will ever reach the ones I thought about during that time, but that’s the catch of it all, isn’t it? You put it out there, and you just never know. You mostly just hope.

The song was recorded as a demo at home and then at Artist Development Recording Studios with Steve Miller in late 2007/early 2008. Melanie O’Brien sings on both the demo (which appeared for a time on the myspace page), and then later on the album version. This song was also performed live with accompanying strings at the 2007 MusicNL Awards, at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John’s, NL.