I Believe
Life's Rich Pageant | 1986
Listen Original Listen Final Mix

I’m A Believer

So looks like I have a change to make good on some mistakes in Shaking Through. We’ll see what I have for the accordian. Times like these when I wish I still had an accordian. The organ selectino here on Garageband is solid, so we’ll likely be using that instead.

Instead of layering the electric, let’s stick to one jangle track and one acoustic. Acoustic guitar comes out better so far than my electrric guitar pages. I’ll try to get a more dialed in jangle tone on the one track arpeggiating the top chord tones. Acoustic for the lower accents and full chords. This will work like the guitar/piano panning from “Shaking Through”, but with acoustic guitar instead of the piano. I may end up adding a lower electric overdub for the lower E to F notes that start the main guitar riff.

Backing vocals were kind of a mess on “Shaking Through”. I’ll have to leave more time for them at the end to match against the main vocals.

Do You Belive In Lyrics After Love?

It takes a lot of conviction to write a song named “I Believe”. Reminds me of the Simpsons joke where Johnny Calhoun took a right wing turn on his later spoken word album “These Thngs I Believe” that “kinda killed his career”.

Michael’s statement of conviction here is that he ultimately belives in change. So do I. Change is the only constant. It superceeds and contains both life, death and taxes.

There’s some great turns here on the golden rule, which has the subject taking their own words over those of others. Michael pleads with the listener to go beyond only considering what one’s self would do in another’s situation, but to consider their perspective as well: “Think of others, think of you”. A while ago, I heard of the platinum rule which states “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them”. This takes other’s perspective into account and appears to be what Micheal is talking about here.