PARADISE LOST released

My latest album Paradise Lost has just been released.  It is available on all major streaming services.

This is an album I didn't intend to write. I only had two future albums in mind. I wanted to write a concept album as a companion piece to my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God. I also intended to write another concept album based on the initial emails between my ex-girlfriend of mine, Mandy, who was the subject of my first album The Elusive Farm Girl, and myself. We met online and I found the way we got to know each other online through email was sweet and fascinating. 

I was inspired to write this album when I heard the 1982 hit by Charlene called Never Been To Me. It brought back a very strong memory of my relationship with my first girlfriend Kathy. We had, in my opinion, a very strong and idyllic relationship. One afternoon, while we were relaxing in her dorm room, that song came on the radio. When it was was over, she said, "I've never been to me either." I was stunned by her words. I thought she was as happy as I was. This was the first indication I had that she suffered from an existential uneasiness that I didn't know how to help her with.  I didn't know what to say, but I knew those words were a harbinger of doom for us.

I developed that memory into the title song Paradise Lost. I loved the song so I decided to build an album around it. When I started the album, I was finishing my "comedy" album Tall Tales & Wishful Thinking. I wanted to follow it up with a more serious album. My most successful album to date was my second one Breakup City, which consisted of raw contemporaneous breakup songs. I decided to essentially make this album Breakup City 2.

Breakup City was about my breakup with my girlfriend Kathy. However, I couldn't make all of the songs about that relationship since my projected companion piece to my memoir would cover that same territory. I didn't want this album to step on that album. I decided to deal with multiple relationships in Paradise Lost.

Although nowadays music fans tend to listen to individual songs rather than complete albums, I still think in terms of albums. Therefore, I wanted to show the transition from one relationship that ended in heartbreak to another one that also ended badly. I felt I needed some transitional songs happy songs as a break between the relationships. I wrote a few songs about Kathy and intended to spend the rest of the album with Mandy. However, I couldn't transition to meeting Mandy because I planned to use that material for my email romance album. So I added two upbeat songs based on my relationship with a third woman I will called Stacey, then one upbeat song about Mandy before bringing on the heartbreak.

Still, it took a long time for me to finalize a song list I was happy with. I wanted to add some emotional nuance. I've learned that breakups are not always a result of the specific actions of a couple in their time and place. Often breakups are a byproduct of previous traumas and expectations you bring into the relationship. I wrote a song along those lines that I considered the centerpiece of the second half of the album. It was an extremely personal "she said" song based on things one of my girlfriends told me. Since her revelations were told to me in confidence, I felt I couldn't release the song without her permission. I sent it to her, and, after much thought, she asked me not to include it. I completely respected her wishes. However, that meant restructuring the album repeatedly and writing some new songs to make an album I thought worked.

Here's the final album. I hope you enjoy it more than I enjoyed living it!

Here's the track listing:

1). PARADISE LOST.  In this song, I recount how my girlfriend's identification with the 1982 Charlene hit Never Been To Me affected our relationship.

 

2).  ALL OF NOTHING. This is perhaps the most self-pitying of my break up songs. Over the years of my first relationship, my identity shifted from Sean to Sean of Sean and Kathy. When she left, I didn't know who I was anymore. I viewed myself as half a person without her.

 

3).  A HUNDRED YEARS.  When Kathy left me, I thought it'd be a hundred years before I could open up my heart again. Actually, it only turned out to be ten years. I literally only went out on one date in the ten years between the time when Kathy left and I first met Mandy.

 

4).  COURAGE.  Narratively, this song is out of order but it works beautifully as a transition from loneliness to taking a chance on a relationship again. Although I executed the song with a female voice, it is based on a poem I wrote to Mandy late in our relationship as I tried to draw her out of her sorrow after her disappointment with another man. (We had a complicated relationship!)

 

5).  STACEY5359.  I actually met Mandy before I met Stacey. Mandy was separated at the time and tried to reconcile with her husband soon after we met. I met Stacey online during that break in our relationship. I have written a number of songs about Stacey which are scattered throughout my albums including Finally Meeting, What If?, Our Secret Love, Windswept Memories, A Friend, Yes, Forever and Cammy, Sweet Cammy. One way or another, those songs all concentrate on the obstacle to our relationship: Technically, she was married. I had never written a song about my attraction toward her and the joy she brought me. Hopefully, this song alleviates that imbalance.

 

6).  COUNTING THE DAYS. Stacey and I had a long distance online relationship. This is a "she said" song based on a email she sent me prior to her flying to Baltimore to visit me in person. She had quite an erotic imagination, which she gave full reign to in the actual email. I rewrote this song quite a few times to tone it down and make it somewhat acceptable for all ages.

 

7). SACRED VOWS. Now I transition back to Mandy permanently for the rest of the album. This song is essentially a combination of two contemporaneous poems I wrote about her. One poem was about her eyes and one was about her voice -- two aspects of her that I found quite appealing.

 

8). FOR YOU TONIGHT. This song is also based on a poem I wrote in June or July of 1996 about my then-girlfriend Mandy called Sojourning. Calling her my then girlfriend at that moment is perhaps being overly optimistic. She was withdrawing from me after a period of intimacy. Her withdrawal was very painful to me, but our relationship would rebound. We hadn't even reached our doomed engagement yet! (The end of our engagement would be covered, from her perspective, in the next song)

 

9).  A NEW START. This is another "she said" song from Mandy's perspective based on a email she sent me after we broke up. During almost our entire relationship, she was wrestling with her feelings for me and a guy who lived in California. After her final break with the California guy, I proposed and she said yes, but it was not meant to be.

 

10). STAY TRUE TO US.  This song was based on a contemporaneous poem I wrote to Mandy after the collapse of our brief engagement. I was heartbroken, but I still had hope it would work out. That's what this song is about.

11). YOU WERE THE ONE.  After the publication of my memoir, I considered a follow-up covering the years I was dating Mandy. I had saved all of our emails and scanned them into a series of pdf files. Mandy and I were still friends, and when I mentioned that I still had the emails, she asked to read them. This "she said" song is based on an email she sent me after she re-read our correspondence. I think it is kind of message every "reject" longs to receive from an ex.

 

12).  DIAMONDS IN THE SAND. The final song on this album exemplified the spirit of my earlier album Look Back in Love. My youthful expectations gave me the impression that any romantic relationship that didn't end in marriage was a failure. I no longer feel that way. Now I look back in love. I am grateful for the love and affection the wonderful women in my life shared with me, albeit often more briefly than I desired. I was blessed to know all of them. In the context of this album, the song is about Mandy, but it equally true of Kathy and Stacey. They were all diamonds in the sand.

    

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

Spotify
YouTube Music
Amazon Music
Apple Music
iHeart Radio
Pandora

My Albums:

Paradise Lost
Tall Tales & Wishful Thinking

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:

  

Listen to me read some chapters here:

Chapel Street - Prologue - My Mother

Chapel Street - Chapter 1 - RestingPlace.com

Chapel Street - Chapter 2 - Elisabetta

Chapel Street - Chapter 3 - The Upload

Chapel Street - Chapter 4 - The Kobayashi Maru

Read about the true haunting that inspired the novel here:

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 1, An Introduction
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 2, The House
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 3, This Is Us
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 4, Arrival
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 5, Methodology
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 6, Clara's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 7, Clara's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 8, My Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 9, My Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 10, My Tale, Pt. 3
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 11, Natalia's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 12, Natalia's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 13, John's Tale, Pt. 1 
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 14, John's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 15, Come Inside!
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 16, Marion's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 17, Marion's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 18, Jeanne's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 19, Jeanne's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 20, Lisa's Tale
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 21, Recap, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 22, Recap, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 23, Recap, Pt. 3

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 24, Bad News Betty

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 25, Joe's Tale

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