Take Me Away

Lyrics:

No, I don’t belong here.
This isn’t my place.
I feel really ugly, I feel like I’m a waste.
Somebody come and hold me.
Come take my hand.
This place it quite scary, take me to another land.

Take me away, just like Dorothy,
Fly me through the air to a land overseas.
Take me away, no I’m not worthy,
Put me in a hole and just forget all about me.
Don’t pass me by, please take notice,
I love you so much, I love you so much.
Alleluia.

I’ll peel off all my skin,
And look in deeper
There must be something there,
there must be something creepier.

Take me away, just like Dorothy,
Fly me through the air to a land overseas.
Take me away, no I’m not worthy,
Put me in a hole and just forget all about me.
Don’t pass me by, please take notice,
I love you so much, I love you so much.
Alleluia.

all day long people looking at me
staring at the monster lurking in me
so I check behind my eyes searching me
I check into the mirror.

Take me away, just like Dorothy,
Fly me through the air to a land overseas.
Take me away, no I’m not worthy,
Put me in a hole and just forget all about me.
Don’t pass me by, please take notice,
I love you so much, I love you so much.
Alleluia.

eamon brett 2011

About this song:

I have a tendency to write in cafés and on trains, and I remember the initial vague sketch for this was written on a train. But the alleluia was something that was added to the song later, as there was something missing and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I’d written the alleluia for a musical I was Musical Director of – it was part of a choral arrangement of “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” for a Sister Act style homage. That production was rather ill-fated though, and the arrangement was never performed. The alleluia stuck around though.

When I was writing this song, and trying to give it some sense of hope outside of the rather downbeat lyrics, the alleluia made sense. Méadhbh sings it so beautifully, and there’s a lovely feel to the melody that just soars over the rest of the music. I’d written it for two part harmony initially, and Méadhbh knows it so well at this stage that she’s adapted it and added her own harmony lines to it too. She has a knack for adding a bit of extra magic to my arrangements.

In the studio, we tracked the piano and the vocal, and left everything quite sparse. Ian was suggesting that I leave it with just piano and voice, as it worked quite well with just those two tracks, but I really wanted to layer the vocals over it, as they add so much to the arrangement.

Song credits:

mister ebby – piano, vocals
méadhbh sullivan – vocals