This week’s song is Bloodshot Eyes.  Here’s the MP3:

This is one of the first songs that Ronnie Jeffrey and I wrote together, back in the mid-nineties. I came up with the Bridge first (“They don’t make visine for the trouble I’ve seen”), then the chorus. It’s a sad little number, but somehow it rocks too, thanks to Ronnie’s excellent guitar track. Of all of the songs I’ve written or co-written, this is the one that hasn’t been recorded commercially that I think has the most potential. Some of my old songs sound like old songs, but this one has aged well.

Songwriting purists would argue that the song is incomplete because it doesn’t set up the backstory – why the protagonist split from his girlfriend. My point, though, was that after a breakup a lot of people focus on the fact the there was a split (as opposed to why it happened) and wallow (or, in the country music tradition, drown) in their sorrow. That’s the vibe we were going for. People have broken up for countless reasons, but everyone has experienced a breakup of one sort or another. It’s the emotion and resulting downward spiral we were writing about, not so much a particular relationship.