Pyre

Album: Nothing More (2014)
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Songfacts®:

  • This is one of a trilogy of songs on Nothing More along with "Jenny" and "God Went North" inspired in part by singer Jonny Hawkins' thought process as he observed his mother dying and his sister struggling with addiction to hard drugs. He explained to Artist Direct: "It was happening at the same time my mom was passing away from cancer and hanging for dear life to help my sister through the process. Simultaneously, I was going through my own calibration of my world view and what I thought about life. I was about 20- or 21-years-old when a lot of this was going down. I was starting to think on my own and ask a lot of questions. I was going back to a blank slate in my head of what I believed because I was born into what my parents believed like anyone else is. I wanted to see what I thought as a new adult myself. I was restructuring my beliefs."

    "At the same time, my mom was going the other direction. I was getting less religious, and she was getting more religious as she was getting closer towards death," Hawkins continued. "It was a weird separation process."

    "'Pyre' was something I felt solace in," he added. "Alan Watts was someone who basically said a lot of things that I was thinking, but I couldn't quite put them into words yet on my own. He put it so eloquently into words that I wanted to take some of his lectures I had been listening to and create a narrative that reflected some of my own thoughts going through that time of my life."

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