Watching Yourself Slowly Disappear

Album: A Billion Heartbeats (2020)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song serves as a tribute to the late Frightened Rabbit singer Scott Hutchison, who killed himself in May 2018 after a lengthy battle with depression and anxiety.
  • Mystery Jets frontman Blaine Harrison had the title written down in a journal for a long time, unsure what song it would live in. He explained to Apple Music, "It came from grappling with my own anxieties and trying to stay afloat in modern life."

    The day Blaine heard the news of Hutchinson's death he wrote the rest of the lyrics as "a musical flare to him wherever he is in the sky, but also to anyone who does feel close to the edge and feels a need to be seen or to be heard."
  • Though Blaine never met Scott Hutchinson, they'd played on the same festival bills and had shared messages back and forth. Writing in a Twitter listening party for A Billion Heartbeats, the Mystery Jets frontman said: "Scott was a man who wore his heart on his sleeve, and his music always felt like an extension of him. It's a rare thing to find in music, but when you do, you hold onto it for dear life."
  • Blaine explained to Apple Music how the song's instrumentation represents coming to the end of life's journey. "It's quite a heavy tune," he said. "It's all centered around this big riff, and parts of it sound underwater. The piano line, which is a thread through the song and has this underwater, ethereal feeling to it. It feels like you're coming perhaps towards the end of the journey."
  • The song intentionally sounds like Frightened Rabbit's 2012 track, "The Woodpile." Said Blaine: "I must have listened to it over 100 times that day, trying to feel his presence and contain my sadness."
  • Coldplay also recorded a tribute to Scott Hutchinson. Their song "Champion Of The World" can be found on their 2019 album Everyday Life.

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