All of These Stars

Untitled, from the series The Indomitable Spirit, Duane Michals, 1989

 
 

ALL OF THE STARS

(Songwriters: Ed Sheeran/ Johnny McDaid)

It’s just another night
And I’m staring at the moon
I saw a shooting star
And thought of you
I sang a lullaby
By the waterside and knew
If you were here,
I’d sing to you
You’re on the other side
As the skyline splits in two
I’m miles away from seeing you
I can see the stars
From America
I wonder, do you see them, too?

So open your eyes and see
The way our horizons meet
And all of the lights will lead
Into the night with me
And I know these scars will bleed
But both of our hearts believe
All of these stars will guide us home

I can hear your heart
On the radio beat
They’re playing ‘Chasing Cars’
And I thought of us
Back to the time,
You were lying next to me
I looked across and fell in love
So I took your hand
Back through lamp lit streets I knew
Everything led back to you
So can you see the stars?
Over Amsterdam
You’re the song my heart is
Beating to

So open your eyes and see
The way our horizons meet
And all of the lights will lead
Into the night with me
And I know these scars will bleed
But both of our hearts believe
All of these stars will guide us home

And, oh, I know
And oh, I know, oh
I can see the stars
From America

 
 

Ed Sheeran wrote this song for The Fault In Our Stars (Josh Boone, 2014) soundtrack. The film is based on the novel of the same name by John Green, published in January 2012.

 
 

To watch the music video please take a gander at The Genealogy of Style‘s Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Genealogy-of-Style/597542157001228?ref=hl

Like a Dog Chasing a Car

Photographs by Duane Michals

 
 

CHASING CARS

(Songwriters: Gary Lightbody, Nathan Connoly, Jonathan Graham Quinn, Tom Simpson and Paul Wilson)

We’ll do it all
Everything
On our own

We don’t need
Anything
Or anyone

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world?

I don’t quite know
How to say
How I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
They’re not enough

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world?

Forget what we’re told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden
That’s bursting into life

Let’s waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world?

Forget what we’re told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden
That’s bursting into life

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes
They’re all I can see

I don’t know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things
Will never change for us at all

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world?

 
 

Chasing Cars is the second single from Snow Patrol‘s fourth album, Eyes Open. It was recorded in 2005 and released on 6 June 2006 in the US and 24 July 2006 in the UK as the album’s second single. The song gained significant popularity in the US after being featured in the second season finale of the popular medical drama Grey’s Anatomy.

It has been reported that lead singer Gary Lightbody wrote the song, sober after a binge of white wine, in the garden of producer Jacknife Lee‘s Kent cottage. The song has Lightbody singing a plain melody over sparse guitars, which has an ever-building crescendo. He stated it was his “purest love song”.

The phrase Chasing Cars came from Lightbody’s father, in reference to a girl Lightbody was infatuated with, “You’re like a dog chasing a car. You’ll never catch it and you just wouldn’t know what to do with it if you did.”

There are two music videos: one for UK, one for the US.

In the music video for UK, Gary Lightbody lies on open ground as cameras film him from different angles. It starts raining, splashing his face and hands. Gary enters a pool of water next to him and in the end of the video, he gets out of the water, rises on his feet and looks up at the camera as it zooms out overhead.

In the US music video, Lightbody is shown lying down in busy places while singing. People ignore him and step over him. Among the places he lies are a diner, an intersection, at the top of an escalator, in a subway car, at the top of a hill overlooking a highway, and at the end on a bed.

In September 2014, Ed Sheeran delivered a rendition of the song on MTV.

To watch the US music video, please take a gander at The Genealogy of Style‘s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Genealogy-of-Style/597542157001228?ref=hl

It Takes Two to Tango

 
 

Objection (Tango) is a song recorded by Colombian singer-songwriter Shakira for her fifth studio album and first English-language album Laundry Service (2001). It was the first song Shakira wrote in English after being encouraged by American singer Gloria Estefan to record material in the language. American singer Gloria Estefan, whose husband Emilio Estefan was managing Shakira at that time, felt that Shakira had the potential to crossover into the mainstream pop industry. However, Shakira was initially hesitant to record songs in English as it was not her first language, so Estefan offered to translate Ojos Así into English in order to show her that “it could translate well.” A Spanish version of the song, entitled Te Aviso, Te Anuncio (Tango), was also recorded by the singer.

Wanting to “find a way to express my ideas and my feelings, my day-to-day stories in English”, Shakira bought rhyming dictionaries, started analyzing the lyrics of songs by Bob Dylan, reading poetry and the work of authors like Leonard Cohen and Walt Whitman and took English lessons from a private tutor.

The music video directed by Dave Meyers

 
 

 
 

This Isn’t Everything You Are is a song by Northern Irish-Scottish alternative rock group Snow Patrol. The track is the second single from the band’s sixth studio album, Fallen Empires, it was released as a digital download on 14 October 2011.

Gary Lightbody said to The Sun: “When we’d finished that song, we were going, ‘F*** me, this could be a big song’. It’s three stories in one — each verse is a different person in my life that was going through a tough time.” “Then the chorus is about trying to explain that everything isn’t as bad as it might seem.”

In another interview, Lightbody told Billboard magazine that he wrote the song “to try to protect” the three people experiencing difficulties, adding that he wanted, “to show them that there were people there for them whenever they needed. Sometimes it’s hard to reach out, it’s hard to ask for help. It’s a recurring theme on the record.”

The radio and video edit of the song excludes the lines “Is he worth all this, is it a simple yes? / Cause if you have to think, it’s fucked / Feels like you loved him more, than he loved you / And you wish you’d never met.”

A music video to accompany the release of This Isn’t Everything You Are was first released onto YouTube on 14 October 2011 at a total length of four minutes and twenty-two seconds. It contains footage filmed in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was directed by Brett Simon and finds Snow Patrol becoming a house band.