Thin White Lines, Behind The Song

As most of you will know, I am releasing a brand new single on the 16th February.

"Thin White Lines" was the song that started my journey in original music, at age 16 I wrote this song about losing someone to a battle of substance abuse.

I'm not too sure why I decided that this theme would be fitting to start my song writing but the depressing theme has seemed to stick, so I must have been doing something right.

This song has been with me since the beginning of my original music career and it's so nice to finally say that it is ready to be released. The produced version sounds different to the way I play it live and I'm so excited for you guys to hear it! I will go on to explain some of my choices here.

I am not the best at writing about my songs, so I do apologise for the state of this, but I thought it would be good if I wrote down the meaning behind the song so you can understand it more.

The Lyrics

I use a lot of substance related imagery in the first verse, I do this to try and set the scene and so you know what I'm talking about. I start the song with "And there's a window to my soul" - here I am referring eyes and how they are the looking glass into someone's life. You can tell a lot from looking into someone's eyes, Especially when under the influence. In the verses I talk about using substances, experiences etc and then as we go into the chorus, I start to talk about the scary side to substance abuse.

Which starts with people not making any sense, them being disorientated, passing out and the list can go on. Here I wanted to show the contrast how how things can change in a split second. As we get to the end of the chorus, the music cuts off at "When you where passed out" I decided to do this to show the hard reality of the situation and that they need to wake up from the state that they are in.

In the second verse, I talk about similar things in the first verse. Here I am setting the scene of 2 people smoking in a garden, getting away from a party. I speak about how the reactions in the brain are on overdrive and how everything is happening so fast. As we get to the end of this verse I show that the drugs are taking over and getting hold on their lives "The devils on my shoulder, whilst the angels are having a rough time"

In the last section of my song, you hear me repeat "And now you've gone past, The Thin White Lines, Thin White Lines, Thin White Lines of Life" This was to signify to obvious use of drugs and the symbolism of moving on to death. I wanted to show the progression of the unfortunate side to substance abuse and how it can be fatal if not helped. It was also to show how easy it is to lose someone to drugs and watch their life change.

The Music

Most of you guys will be used to hearing this sing acoustically, but on the records it has a very full arrangement on it which me and Francis Gill spent absolutely ages on.

On the 16th Feb, you will be able to hear this new version and I am so excited for you to listen to it. It is very different from the acoustic version and I feel like it intensifies the emotion and drags you into the song more than it does acoustically.

Let me know what you think when it comes out.

I will do a sperate blog post explaining the choices we made for this and why.

Thank you for reading and supporting me,

Tymisha X

Thin White Lines, Tymisha, Single Cover