My Baby: New release on Bandcamp. A song from one generation to the next.
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Songs That Never Saw the Light of Day
My Bandcamp is a home for new music and unreleased songs.
Bandcamp is somewhere to gather my music, share a few stories and let the songs find their listeners in their own time. There’ll be old recordings, new music and things that never saw the light of day.
My Baby. (1997)
I wrote “My Baby” in 1997, while I was pregnant with my son. I was 24 years old and still attending music college part-time.
I remember playing it to my friend Damian in one of the piano rooms at Lewisham College. It was my favourite room in the old converted Victorian building, flooded with light from an enormous window, with acoustics to die for.
When I finished playing, Damian was teary. He told me I was going to be a great mum. It was a real moment that I have never forgotten.
“My Baby” is my attempt to tell my unborn son something honest about the world he was entering. The song acknowledges that every one of us is different and that pain is an unavoidable part of being alive. It asks for depth, integrity and inner strength. It cautions against losing yourself in love, while offering the reassurance that feeling alone does not mean you have to face life alone.
It also asks for parental forgiveness. At 24, I was already aware that parents pass things on to their children: love, wisdom and protection, but also mistakes and unresolved pain. I understood that wanting the very best for your child does not make you perfect. The song carries both a promise and an apology: a promise that I would love him and want him to grow into a happy, strong person, and an apology for anything of mine that he might one day have to carry.
Listening to it now, I can hear the young woman I was: hopeful, protective and trying to make sense of motherhood before it had truly begun. I can also hear how much of the song still holds true. We want to shield our children from pain, yet we know that part of loving them is helping them develop the strength to meet it. We want them to love deeply without disappearing into somebody else. Above all, we want them to know they are never alone.
The song has remained in this raw state, unreleased for all these years. My dear friend John helped me record this version back in the day. It was always meant for an epic, orchestrated production with beautiful soaring backing vocals. You never know - one day, I may just do that.
Now my baby's baby has arrived; it feels like the right time to let it go out into the world as he begins the same extraordinary journey with his daughter.
That circle of time gives “My Baby” a meaning I could never have imagined when I first played it in that piano room in 1997.
The words have not changed, but life has deepened them. What began as a message from a young mother to her unborn son now feels like something passed from one generation to the next: an expression of love, hope, honesty and forgiveness.
Written and performed by Andrea Britton
Produced by J Meaney
1997
If you feel like supporting you can buy it here.
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