Through a series of circumstances I recently latched on to an album called ‘The Ill Tempered Klavier’ by singer/songwriter Ben Shive. Ben has worked with Andrew Peterson, one of my favorite artists, and that was part of what led me to this album.
As happens to me too rarely, I was totally blown away by the whole album. I have listened to it over and over and virtually memorized all the songs.
As a service to the internet community, I’m planning to blog the words, as best I can decipher them, to the whole album. This entry gives the words to ’97’, which is reported to be an account of Ben Shive’s senior year of high school. (I have no idea if Ben was a U2 fan. If not, sorry)
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97, by Ben Shive
The year my brother went away, the song got sad.
And I woke up one day feeling so funny I forgot to laugh.
Like I was all up in my head, and no way out.
Sad for nothing, just sad, every day was down.
It happened overnight.
The flyer on the wall said do you feel
Nothing at all, and do you wonder if you’re really real.
My feelings exactly, cause where was the old me?
He used to be happy; he used to think he was okay.
It happened overnight.
The little girl was taken; we tied a ribbon round the tree.
And the search went on for ages, while the search went on for me.
And I thought about her mother; there was nothing she could do.
Cause she couldn’t go back and she couldn’t go on
And God only knew where her baby had gone.
The year my brother went away, and the song got sad
Everything changed and we could never go back.
Yea, everything changes, everything dies.
The year my brother went away it happened over night.
