When You Never Finish a Song That Everyone Keeps Playing

Back when I was a kid, early 90s, I heard this song. The rhythm moved forward like Pheidippides who ran to Athens to announce victory over the Persians. But it was the voice that really caught me off guard. Raw. Serious. Singing about having no home, no shoes, but having life. I didn’t know what the song was or who she was, but the voice and the melody stuck.

Later I found out it was Nina Simone.

After I Got Life, I eventually heard Feeling Good and My Baby Just Cares for Me. I felt like she was singing to me, which made no sense. How could I relate so much to this lady?

When I started making music in 1998, I didn’t have a piano. Instead I got a PC and a cracked version of FL Studio. No idea what I was doing. Just clicking around. Deleted. Clicked again. Loops stacking on loops. It didn’t take long before I got better.

At the end of the 2000s, I heard a live recording of Nina from London. She was covering Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood. Slower than the original. The way she stretched, don’t let me beeee, sounded unreal.

I opened FL Studio without a plan, just following the feeling. Took about an hour to put together an instrumental. By that time, I also had a song idea in mind. It was about imposter syndrome and the feeling of being inadequate. Wondering what each of us leaves behind after we’re long gone and whether the memory matches who we were. What if we’re remembered the wrong way? What if people remember only that contorted image, our lowest moments? It felt close to Dante. Halfway through the journey, lost in a dark wood, aware you’re off path but unsure how to return.

The chorus went, remember me, but don't let me be, and when Nina’s voice entered with, don’t let me beeee, it was a prayer rising from a silent church.

I never finished the song and in 2010 I had to switch focus, as music wasn’t paying bills. Andre 3000 said on Elevators, if you don’t move your feet, then I don’t eat, so to eat, I had to move into a cubicle as a UX designer. I put everything else on hold. Before I stepped away from music, I uploaded the Nina instrumental to SoundCloud. No rollout or promo. Just left it there.

Three hundred thousand plays. Fifteen hundred likes.

More than ten years later, I came back to it. Different headspace, better tools and more patience. Simple progression. I gave the idea another pass, thinking about what could’ve been.