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Singled Out: Passenger


10/07/2008
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(PR) Welcome to Singled Out where we ask artists to tell us about their latest single. Today Passenger's Mike Rosenberg tells us about the song "Table For One," which comes off their new album "Wicked Man's Rest". Passenger caught our attention because of the unusual subject matter of many of the lyrics. This song has a more straightforward story but none the less an interesting tale behind it. Here is Mike to tell you about it:

I'm going to tell you about our song "table for one", the idea for the song came about on a blustery London night. My song writing partner Andrew and I were in the capital to play a small acoustic show to a polite and listening audience at a place called the globe theatre in Balham. After the show had finished, we found our selves in a typical English pub (well I say typically English, unfortunately most have now turned in to trendy wine bars with uncomfortable seats and soulless decor) so lets call it a traditional English pub, one with deep red upholstery and needless trinkets nailed to the wall, the kind of pub that you have to bend down to get inside because it was built in a time when humans were a foot smaller.

As we sat there slowly drinking our Guiness, we talked about the gig as usual, the things that worked, the things that didn't, the crazy woman in the front row with the Passenger t shirt on that comes to all our gigs. But as the night drew on, we suddenly became aware of the fact that all the remaining customers in the pub (of which there were about seven) were all single, middle aged men , drinking in silence, alone .

This got Andrew and I on to the subject of loneliness and more specifically the type of loneliness that you see in men. Not that women don't get lonely of course but there is a heavy, thudding, staring in to the bottom of they're 7th pint glass type of loneliness that I've seen in men across the country my entire life.

The next day, having stayed the night in a hotel not unlike the one in the shining (no weird ghost twins or being chased around a maze thankfully!) we went to a studio to mix our first song for the album, but when we got there, none of the equipment wanted to work, the engineer, Matt, a lovely bloke, shuffled around like a loon, pulling leads and wires out and plugging them back in again.

Andrew and I went in to the other room to relieve the pressure a bit, we decided that as we had our guitars from the night before we'd have a play, within half an hour we had written Table For One, with the subject matter still fresh in our minds, the lyrics just seemed to fall out, telling the story of an old man, sitting in the pub on his own and explaining his lack of communication skills between his fellow drinkers and more importantly his wife and children. It goes on to touch upon his childhood and the era in which he grew up in which perhaps helps to explain things.

The last verse I think sums up the sentiment of the song and explains that the anger expressed through the second chorus and bridge is all down to bitter disappointment...

"so i sit on this table for one,
i wont go till they tell me to leave,
why'd they teach me to follow my dreams,
when dreams are all they can be ."

Hear the song for yourself and sample other tracks off the album, learn more about the band their new album
right here!



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