I'm rather pleased with this one. I think it's probably the most complete song I've yet produced.
The song's genesis came about from a number of different directions. Firstly, I read an article about the then Secretary of State for Education, Nicky Morgan, where she was described as "looking stunned like some fluffy bunny caught in the headlights of a truck". Also, as with all my songs, there is a personal element which I shan't go into here. Early on as I was mulling over ideas while walking in the countryside I heard the phrase "Did you think? Not at all!" set to precisely the tune it now has. The phrase "Did you think?" goes up, the way questions do, and the answer, "Not at all", goes down. I didn't plan that; it just happened. It was only when the song was finished that I realised what I'd done.
I had Paul McCartney's masterpiece "Here There and Everywhere" in mind as I structured the song. Paul's song has verses that begin respectively with "Here", "There" and "Everywhere". In my song the different sectons of each verse start with "Did you think?", "Did you care?" and "Did you worry?" which are then telescoped together just before the chorus.
I've used my favourite trick of having the chorus in a different key to the verses. The chorus is in C major while the verses are in A major - the reverse of the Beatles'"Lady Madonna". It's taken me years to summon up the courage to jump to a new key with no (classically "correct") modulation in between but in this song I think it neatly depicts the surprise of the person suddenly "caught in the glare".
And that middle eight! (well, actualy middle eleven. I'm rather proud of the odd phrase lengths in this song - very Lennonesque!). The whole thing just tumbled out when I realised I needed a middle section and picked up my guitar to write it. I wanted to make it sound a little like the Beach Boys (the ba-ba-bas were pinched from "God Only Knows"!) and I hope that comes across.
The internal rhymes and alliteration were very consciously put in, but when I scanned through the completed lyrics I thought "I'm not going to be able to sing this; it's too wordy." However I surprised myself with how easily it does sing. I think those rhymes and alliteration make the words trip off the tongue more easily, if anything. By the way, the trisyllabic assonance of "calculate" and "fabricate" was borrowed from rap. Perhaps someone of my generation is not supposed to like rap music but I think that there's a tremendous energy in the lyrics of well-written rap.
As you've probably guessed by now, I'm rather proud of "Caught in the Glare". I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed putting it together.