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Originally written September 2016:
I was driving to school one morning, listening to Song Exploder (Mitski, "Your Best American Girl" I think), and I was hitting every red light on my way to school. Maybe it was something that was said on the podcast that inspired me, or the idea of songwriting in combination with that situation, but the line "Every light I got to turned red" came to my mind and didn't go away. Then came a melody while I was walking to the building. I recorded a rough vocal sketch on my phone. A whole story came to mind. I wrote out some lyrics that day. That night, I couldn't sleep until that song was done, so I played very quietly and figured the song out at 2 AM and tried not to wake anyone up.

The song is a big apology. This never happened to me, it's just a story that came to me with the song. This is the story:
I got a letter notifying me of a family member's funeral happening soon. This was a family member that wasn't very well known in my family, but I had always hoped to get to know them better and keep in touch, but I had never gotten around to it. And now they were gone. The funeral was out of state, but I had managed to book a flight, even at such short notice. When the flight date came, it was cancelled. So I tried driving, even though it was a very long drive. At some point I just couldn't stay awake, so I had to pull over and sleep. As I got closer, every light was red. Once I got there, every door I tried was locked. I asked people around where the funeral was, but nobody knew about it. It's as if the universe was trying to make me late.

lyrics

I tried my best to make it to you
Up to you
But the drive is hard to stay awake
Up, away
The flight was cancelled today
There's nothing I could do

Every light I got to turned red
Every door I pulled at was locked
Everyone I spoke to didn't know
I tried, I tried, I tried, I tried
I'm sorry I was late

Real letters travel so slow
Too far, far away
We'd fallen out of touch and
One ring on the phone
Was all it took to say...
My heart broke at the news

Every light I got to turned red
Every door I pulled at was locked
Everyone I spoke to didn't know
I tried, I tried, I tried, I tried
I'm sorry I was late

As if it wasn't enough to hardly talk
And if I'd gotten a chance to know you at all
Arriving late
A universe delay

credits

from Songs with Words Demo, released October 12, 2017
Performed by Santiago Ramones and Trevor Lindley
Mixing by Logan Haley
Mastering by Santiago Ramones
Additional Engineering by Stuart Adams, Logan Haley, and Landon Ward

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Santiago Ramones Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Composer, Podcaster, Producer, Songwriter, Performer

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