SeanPaulMurphyVille: March 2025

Friday, March 7, 2025

LOOK BACK IN LOVE released

My latest album Look Back in Love has been released. It is available on all major streaming services.

I believe I wasted too many years of my life concentrating on what I felt was taken away from me instead of what I has been given to me. That’s why I have now embraced the philosophy of looking back in love.

Look at the veritable flood of heartbreak songs I have written about the women in my life. If you judged those women simply by those words, you’d think they were horrible people. They weren’t. They shared their hearts, their thoughts and their affection with me for years. Now I see they gave me all of the love they had for me. I simply wasn’t someone they wanted to marry. Should I punish them for that? Actually I’m glad none of my former partners married me out of a sense of obligation. That would have been terrible for both of us.

Does that mean I have never been hurt? No. Does that mean I’ve never been wronged? No. I acknowledge that, but at this time in my life I prefer to look at what I’ve been given and not what has been taken away. I look back in love. Hence the title of this album: Look Back in Love.

Here's the track listing:

1). PLEASING FICTION doesn't necessarily encapsulate my thematic ideal for the album. It is essentially another one of my songs complaining about an emotionally inconsistent partner.

Strangely, I was inspired to write this song by my ten-year-old granddaughter Mara. I was driving with her and asked her what kind of music she liked. She said she liked K-Pop, and played a number of those songs for me. One of those songs even rhymed fiction with friction, but in a different context. I decided it was time to write a K-Pop song.

Lyrically, the chorus was inspired by my wife Debbie during a previous period of difficulty. One day she would say she loved me, only to say the next day that she didn’t. That made me think that her words of love were a fiction. The verses more reflect my relationship with my elusive farm girl Mandy. The lyrics have an overall sexual emphasis because, well, it’s a K-Pop song.

2). LOVE'S SWEET ABYSS was the first song I wrote for the album, before I even knew I was writing an album. I often wake up in the morning with lyrics going through my head, but they rarely survive the trip downstairs to the computer. In this case, I woke up with the complete chorus and I managed to remember it long enough to write it down.

The verses reflect my relationship with my elusive farm girl. Why do I always return to her? First, she was a huge influence on my life. Secondly, I am a dramatist by profession, and my relationship with Mandy was the most dramatic one of my life. As a result, I suspect our relationship will always prove a fertile ground for inspiration.

I directed Udio to give this song a contemporary pop feeling. I wanted to go with a more modern sound with this album. It really helps the first few songs flow together.

3). LOVE'S AFTERGLOW reflects my desire that sex be something more than merely a physical act. What I want most from sex is emotional intimacy. That’s what this song is about.

4). LOOK BACK IN LOVE is the title track. I try to express my new philosophy in the this song. I originally wrote this song from a male perspective, but I couldn’t find the right voice. It sounded better when I switched to a female vocalist, and I did have to alter some of the original lyrics to reflect the change.

5). A CANDLE IN THE DARK is a love song about platonic love. It was inspired by a dear friend of mine who has been my most trusted confidant for more than thirty years.

6). ALL OF MY LOVE is a "she said" song from the perspective of Mandy, my elusive farm girl. The lyrics from the opening verses were inspired by emails she sent me early in our relationship, but the bulk of the song comes from a card she sent me prior to our brief engagement

7). EULOGY, No 1 is based on a poem I wrote for the eulogy I gave at my sister Laura’s funeral after she took her life on Valentine’s Day in 1994.

8). EVERY RIGHT is another examination of my new philosophy of looking back in love. Some of my close friends think I am too soft a touch; that I am too quick to forgive people. In this song I examine how I am forgiving others to heal my own heart, not necessarily to help or justify the other person. If my attitude helps the other person: Great! Regardless, it is something I have to do for myself.

9). I ALREADY MISS YOU is a “she said” song from the perspective of my first girlfriend Kathy. It was inspired by a letter she sent me immediately after one of my weekend visits to her college. I worked hard finding the right musical tone for this song. I was trying to replicate the sound from the Carole King album Tapestry, which was one of Kathy’s favorites. I think the A-I singer managed to capture King’s cadence if not her voice. This is another one of my favorite songs on the album.

10). My song THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA from my previous album expressed Mandy's concern that no one would ever really know her. I wrote the next song UNSATISFIED after my wife Debbie expressed similar thoughts. While I am sympathetic to their concerns, I must say that if you feel no one knows you, you have to take some responsibility for that yourself. You have to open up if you want people to know you! While I must confess that I ultimately left Mandy unsatisfied, I am having better luck with my wife.

11). RED HILL WAY was co-written with my wife Debbie. Red Hill Way was the name of the street where she lived with her late ex-husband Bob.

Debbie’s best ideas always seem to come while she’s driving. One day, she called me from the road and sang me the chorus. Later, we sat down together to work on the song. I asked Debbie to tell me all of the things that house brought to mind. Afterwards, she got busy and I had to finish up the song myself. She was very happy with the result.

12). I CANNOT CLOSE THE DOOR is about my inability to close the door completely on someone I love regardless of what they did. Once I love someone, romantically or otherwise, I always care for them. I meant this song to be more general, but as I started writing it became more individually specific and more sexual than I intended. The narrator of I Cannot Close the Door seems sexually obsessed with a former partner. That was not my initial intention, but it certainly makes for a better song. Sometimes you have to follow your muse!

13). A SECRET PATH expresses my belief that every relationship is individual and unique. My relationship with Kathy was different than my relationship with Mandy, Kaycee or Debbie. That doesn’t mean one is better than the others. You just can’t seek the same thing you had with one person that you had with another. Every couple walks a secret path that cannot be replicated with anyone else. That’s another reason to look back in love. The joy you found with one person, regardless of how short-lived, can never be repeated with someone else.

14). SHE NEVER HAD TO LEAVE is the second eulogy on the album. When you look back in love, you can’t help but think about the people who left this world before us. In this song, I look back at my father and grandfather in the first verse, my sister Laura and my brother Mark, who both took their own lives, in the second verse, and my little granddaughter Emma in the final verse. And, yes, I did like the world much better before they had to go…

15). I intended the previous song to be the closer, but I wanted to end the album on a more upbeat tone so I wrote UNDER THE SAME SKY. The song expresses my contentment that my many past loves still live under the same sky as me. I don’t ever need to see any of them again to look back in joy at what they shared with me. And, yes, I do pray for them all.

I hope you enjoy the songs and the album. You can listen to it on these and other streaming services:

My Albums:

Look Back in Love
The Struggle
Many Faces of Love
He Said She Said
Many Sides of Love
Tales of Love and Death
Breakup City
The Elusive Farm Girl

Here's some music videos I worked on:

Big Pun: Twinz (Deep Cover 98)

Crack The Sky: Mr. President
Greg Kihn: Horror Show
Nils Lofgren: Alone

Face Dancer: Red Shoes

The Sunday Cannons: Friends Become Flowers

Other blogs about songwriting:

Sean Paul Murphy: (Failed) Songwriter

Sean Paul Murphy: (Failed) Songwriter, Pt. 2

Be sure to check out my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God, published by TouchPoint Press. It is my true story of first faith and first love and how the two became almost fatally intertwined.

Here are some sample chapters of The Promise:

Chapter 1 - A Photograph

Chapter 2 - My Death

Chapter 3 - Childhood

Chapter 4 - Saved!

Chapter 5 - The Promise

Chapter 6 - The Mission

Chapter 7 - Mission Accomplished
Chapter 15 - Quarter To Midnight

Be sure to check out my novel Chapel Street. It tells the story of a young man straddling the line between sanity and madness while battling a demonic entity that has driven his family members to suicide for generations. It was inspired by an actual haunting my family experienced.

You can buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.

Learn more about the book, click Here.

Watch the book trailer: