The song that’s either about everything or absolutely nothing.
Stone Black Witches’ vocalist and guitarist Brian James tells us about the Retford band’s new song Neverborn…
You know what’s boring? Songs about break-ups. Another bloke with a baseball cap telling us somebody left him and now he’s walking home in the rain while reverb does the emotional heavy lifting.
Brilliant. Cheers. Can’t wait to hear that for the next 20 years.
Then somebody turns up shouting “I was neverborn.” Now that’s at least an intriguing line. Whether it’s true is another story.
The internet has trained everyone to demand explanations: “What’s the song about?”, “Who’s it about?”, “What’s the hidden meaning?”, “Explain the ending.”
No. That’s homework. Art stopped being interesting the moment everyone expected the artist to hand over the answer sheet. Neverborn refuses to do that. Good. Half the fun is watching people argue over it.
Some people reckon it’s about religion. Others hear philosophy. Some think it’s about living fast. Some think it’s about death. Someone’s mate Dave will inevitably insist it’s about mushrooms because apparently everything is about mushrooms now.
The best songs don’t belong to the band anymore. They belong to whoever’s shouting them back in a room full of strangers.
What’s funny is how uncomfortable people become when lyrics don’t explain themselves.
“I came from a fire in the sky.” Immediately somebody needs to categorise it: “No, that’s definitely…”
No, it isn’t. Maybe it’s just a great line. Imagine that. A lyric existing because it sounds massive.
Here’s a prediction. Nobody is going to agree what this song means. Excellent. Because once everyone agrees… the song’s dead.
Songs should behave more like rumours than Wikipedia pages. People have forgotten mystery. Every band documents every rehearsal. Every recording session. Every breakfast. Every thought. Every pedal. Every plugin. Every coffee. Stop it. Leave something unexplained. Mystery is free. Use it.
There’s a reason old skate videos were better than new ones. They didn’t spend six months colour grading somebody rolling down a handrail. They pointed a camera at complete chaos and somehow captured magic. Imperfection became style. Not because it was fashionable. Because it was real.
Neverborn feels closer to that philosophy than to modern playlist culture.
Neverborn. Not unborn. Neverborn. One word.
Immediately your brain starts working. Is it arrogant? Religious? Stupid? Poetic? Doesn’t matter. You’re already thinking. Most songs don’t survive the first scroll.
This one at least leaves fingerprints.
The chorus doesn’t ask permission either. It doesn’t apologise for itself.
It doesn’t politely build towards a radio-friendly payoff. It arrives. Shouts. Leaves. Like somebody kicking your front door open just to remind you you’re alive. That’s punk. Not mohawks. Not safety pins. Energy.
The biggest lie in modern music is that listeners need everything explained. They don’t. People watched 2001: A Space Odyssey for decades without agreeing what the ending meant. People still argue about David Lynch films. People have been debating religious texts for thousands of years. Maybe uncertainty is the point. Maybe certainty is boring.
Here’s a challenge:
- Listen to Neverborn.
- Don’t Google it.
- Don’t ask the band.
- Don’t read interviews.
- Just decide what you think.
If your answer changes six months later… good. That means the song grew. Most songs don’t.
The irony? People will probably spend longer arguing about what Neverborn means than the band spent writing it. Perfect. That’s how it should be.
Some songs give you answers. The good ones leave you with questions. The really good ones make you wonder if you’ve been asking the wrong questions all along.
So, here’s one more. If every life is the universe looking through another window… what does it see when it looks through yours?
And one last thing before I go: the oldest thing about you isn’t your body.