An Angel Fell and half of heaven (raise me saved)

I'm very very glad that in the past few months, I've gotten not just one but four actual songs out, and that I'm proud of how they turned out. I'd change a few things here and there if I ever post them on Spotify, which is in the plans (save for maybe WKTA, because it's very obviously a fansong), and some of them definitely don't fit my voice (Sweet On Me works much better as a duet), but they were fun to make and people like them, and I'm pretty satisfied with them. 

And I want to talk about two of the songs' first drafts, some lines that didn't make it into the songs. and a couple of things here and there, so let's talk about them!

half of heaven (raise me saved)

half of heaven is going first, because I wrote the very first parts of it before any of the other Good Omens songs I made. The first draft isn't even a song, but a poem, and a much, much shorter than the final song, and the tone of it was less longing and yearning, but more adoring.  And it was written in all lowercase, because I wanted that Aesthetic(tm), and as you can see, I kept it in the stylization of the title.

my love
i have stood by you
from the start
i will not run away now
wherever you are
i will come to you
i have loved you from the start
i will not stop now

no grace
no hellfire
no war
will stop me
not time
not distance
not death
will keep me
i will always find you, angel
i have loved you from the start
i will not stop now

you are breath
you are light
you are blood
you are the star i am caught in orbit of
you are the flame moth wings burn just to be near of
you are paradise
lost to be found only by those you grant sight to
and yet none are ever worthy
not any
not i
yet you love me still, dearest
i have loved you from the start
i will not stop now

There's not a lot to it, and it was more like word vomit that I saved onto my phone because I wanted to capture the feeling of it. I left it alone for a little while, and then decided, hey, maybe a Crowley song would be fun, and drafted this, which is a Crowley song, but angrier.

Hellfire or bitter betrayal
The light is cold and harsh and
So unlike your warmth and love
Struck down like Caesar's own
But this time I'm deserving of it

All you ever did was believe
And all I ever did was ask
And thus condemned we were
For being us
For being blessed
For being damned and damned again

Show me a great plan
When innocence is crucified
Show me a great plan
When love is told it'll never die
Then show me a great plan
When backs are turned all the same
In the same breath a hand is held out
But is it blade or faith?

Sauntered vaguely downwards
But I fell fast for you
And I would give my wings if
It meant that you would fly again
Beloved, besotted, bewitching
You can fell half of Heaven
With that smile, the sun's not needed
That alone can raise me saved

Show me a great plan
When the last light has been dimmed
Show me a great plan
When you would not give them mercy
Show me a great plan
When sainthood is not needed
Only a heart pleading
Broken, battered, bleeding

The vibe of this one is nowhere near the final song. In it, Crowley still adores Aziraphale, but the yearning is not the focus of the song, and instead, it's about how he thinks it's unfair that Aziraphale is considered a pariah amongst angels when he's the 'last light' that's being dimmed because the angels are shunning him. It's more of a song of a lover who is absolutely ride or die for their lover but is also ready to throw hands at everyone else. I ended up being captivated by this part:  

Beloved, besotted, bewitching / You can fell half of Heaven /With that smile, the sun's not needed/ That alone can raise me saved

And thought - hey, there's something tender there, in the way Crowley describes Aziraphale, and I wanted to explore it, which started a whole new draft. A very short one, because I ended up going 'oh this is sad', and this is the draft:

Sauntered vaguely downwards
But I fell fast for you
Tripping over my own feet, and tripping over my words into
A story told time and time again
The greatest stories are love stories and this is how this one goes:
I meet you, I fall in love
And you don't love me back

Which was later shortened and polished into the final first stanza of the song, but 'you don't love me back' had already shot me in the heart and left me cold and dying in an alleyway, so I left the song alone for a while. Eventually, I started working on it again, taking several breaks in between, and came up with a huge chunk of what was later polished into the final song, save for the last parts. One notable difference is this stanza: 

You're the silver bullet to my heart
You're death in its kindest form
To the altar of your light
All I can offer is myself
You're everything that love should be
And I've never been able to stop my heart
So I'll meet you
I'll fall in love
You don't need to love me back

Which I found a little too all over the place (and also, to the altar of your light / all I can offer is myself can't really be sang right with the melody), so I tore it up and changed it to:

To the sacredness of you
All I can offer is myself
The tatters of who I think I am
The empty ruins of my heart and my hands
I know there's nothing left for me
But I've never been able to stop my heart
So I'll meet you
I'll fall in love
You don't need to love me back

I originally hadn't planned to have Aziraphale sing in the last part of the song, but while I was writing it, I thought it would be so uplifting to have Aziraphale sing that yes, they're alright. By this point, the song had already changed so much of its tone, shifting from the initial adoration and devotion of the original poem and the anger of the first actual song draft, to Crowley's attention fully on Aziraphale as he retells their meetings and the changing of his feelings - which is actually a very favorite part of mine; it was fun to have the song not only attempt to capture his feelings towards Aziraphale but also show the progress of it from the blunt 'you don't love me back', to the hopeful rewording of the statement, to the accepting and loving 'you don't need to love me back'.

I'm very glad with how the lyrics turned out, and I'm quite proud of some parts of them. The first line is, obviously, a reference to Crowley being the angel who 'sauntered vaguely downwards', and I thought it would be nice to immediately follow that up with him falling fast and tripping. The greatest story ever told is a favorite of mine - I have a lot of parts of the song I like, really, which I'm happy about  - because it's Crowley saying that love stories are what is considered some of the greatest stories in human history, which is why the lyric is in quotation marks. So it's him being slightly 'oh, yes, the greatest story ever told, it's a love story, isn't that funny?' because at this point, he doesn't think that Aziraphale likes him, so him being in love with an angel is just sad, but humans would love a good tragedy if it was romantic. The next few lines after this one is also a repeated trope in romance, which is pointed out, and that trope is: I meet you, I fall in love, and you don't love me back. It's a favorite trope of so many people, myself included; unrequited pining. 

Another favorite part of mine is To the sacredness of you / All I can offer is myself / The tatters of who I think I am / The empty ruins of my heart and my hands. The first part is just an incredibly pretentious way to say 'altar', and the next few lines are so dear to me because of the punch I think they give. Crowley knowing that he's really not like the rest of Hell but at the same time hardly belongs in Heaven means that he belongs on neither part, and that's something that's always resonated with me, and, I'm sure, with other people.  Hell thinks he's too nice, Heaven only sees him as a demon, he's not exactly human, which is what makes him gravitate to Aziraphale in the first place, but I always fixated on how much that means for his identity, if he's found he belongs nowhere. I don't think that's something that's very easily dealt with, so he's honestly saying that all he can offer is what he thinks he is. I also took inspiration from how, in the book, it's mentioned that he's living a lifestyle that he 'thinks would be the kind of human' he would be. I tried to capture that, but just more shattered, because he did get kicked out of Heaven and is still not accepted in Hell. 

And then of course, there's There's a love / That doesn't ask for much / I don't need you to look at me / Like you'd get lost in my eyes too / I don't have much by way of words / But I want you to know / As long as I can love you / It's alright. 

I ADORE this part, although I do have to be honest that I did rip some parts of this from an original story I wrote a few years ago. It's about a star who gets exiled for helping a human they took pity on; it was actually their last warning because they've been helping the human for a while, although the human never knew because magic, so it just looks like small miracles lining up to make his admittedly miserable life slightly better. After the star gets exiled and is, funnily enough, helped by the very human they've been helping from afar, they slowly fall in love with him, but also know it's very possible that he doesn't feel the same. But the thing is that they have cared about him and his happiness from afar for a long time that they don't mind, and instead just wants to be allowed to keep being his friend and helping him. Some of the lines that I wrote for this were 'there's a love that doesn't ask for much, that just wants to love and be allowed to love', which I then wrote into the song because hey, Star OC and Crowley: same pining hat. 

I think there's also just a big gut punch when that line comes on, because, it's just so wholesome and sad to hear someone say 'I don't need you to look at me like you love me romantically but as long as I can be there for you even as a friend, it's alright'. GET YOU A MAN. I love any pairing with a dynamic like that. Immediately followed with Crowley continuously reassuring that 'it's alright' (half of that was for himself, because hey, it's still gotta hurt), and then Aziraphale singing - I was so happy with it. 

Overall, I felt soft when making it. Cried a little. Thanks, Crowley.

An Angel Fell

An Angel Fell is, despite being the second song I made, the beginning of me uploading songs I'm making again, and I'm forever grateful that people like it and have encouraged me to come back to music again. Its very first draft, which wasn't much of a draft at all but just a few lines I thought were nice while I was in bed during a very rainy morning (yeah, that's where I got 'fell on a rainy day' from). Those lines were:

You made the stars
You made reason
You made my heart beat twice for treason

From there, I started working on the rest of the song, finishing it before I finished half of heaven. The first actual finished full draft I made only has a few words different from the final song, as I had thought that the song was going to be about Aziraphale singing about Crowley from the beginning. 

This is the world's
Longest-kept secret
Won't fit in any garden or locket
No shoebox would ever hold true
What I've kept from you

Only one cage can contain my whispers
And it's keeping your lungs, your heart and your jitters
Your spark of good that still shines through
And says "I love you"

You made the stars
You made reason
You made my heart beat twice for treason
You made me fall, fall, fall for you

An angel fell on a rainy day
When the ground was could
And there lay
My heart
At your feet

Love, won't you stay with me?

You are the world's
Longest-kept secret
Kept in my heart, held close in my pocket
No poet could write any blue
That I've felt for you

Sweet like a song
Sweet like a sonnet
Sweetheart, my feather's caught in your bonnet
But keep them for there's nothing I won't give up for you

You waged a war
Against reason
Fought with your heart that beats twice for treason
I'd gladly fall, fall, fall for you

An angel fell on a rainy day
When the ground was cold
And there lay
My heart
At your feet

Love, won't you stay

So kind, so bright, so blinding with the light
That I'd fly to at the cost
Of my wings turning to ash and I'd
Rise with them anyway
And tell them to bring me to you

Cause you're the home I want to go to

Have you ever loved someone so much
You would do anything?
You would be anything?
You'd defy everything?

Have you ever loved someone so much
You'd break the binding strings?
You'd take the golden rings?
A nightingale would sing?

Have you ever loved someone so much
You would do anything?
You would be anything?
You'd defy everything?

Have you ever loved someone so much that you would leave the garden?

Nothing in Eden was ever as beautiful as you

And I fell, I fell on a rainy day
When the ground was cold and there lay
My heart at your feet

Thank you for staying with me

Some parts of the song were completely rewritten so that it would flow better, the words wouldn't be forcefully stretched to fit with the melody, and also to add a bit more punch to the emotions I was trying to capture. Another longest-kept secret was added after nothing in Eden in order to make the transition sound better, and I also changed the very last line, because gardens were a huge motif in the show and the show ends with Aziraphale and Crowley leaving the garden and stepping into the freedom of being able to be themselves without worrying about Heaven or Hell. So, to keep with Aziraphale slowly showing his longest-kept secret to Crowley through out the whole song, I wanted it to culminate in them leaving the garden. 

The music was made with a music box on purpose because I wanted it to have a feeling of an antique music box found by someone who finds more than what they expected. The melody started from the first stanza, and I worked on it to form the rest of the song. One notable change was the notes for fall, fall, fall, because initially, I had the notes continuously rising to oppose the lyrics, to show that Aziraphale was rising above of the angels' hypocrisy even if he could be Felled. This same melody was supposed to be in the background of So kind, so bright ,but I later changed it to mimic a bird's struggling flight pattern (which I visualized as a Flappy Bird flight pattern, really) because I wanted it to sound like Aziraphale was struggling to fly, but kept going because Crowley is the home he wants to go to. 

Overall, the song is soft and I think really has the loving tone I wanted it to have. 

I definitely want to put both of these songs on Spotify, but I want to re-record them and make sure the vocals are clearer, and maybe change a few things about the music. I'm rather glad of what I've made, and I'm glad that everyone likes them too.