Confessional songwriting often chronicles lived experience. This allows one to revisit sentiments and perhaps go back to certain stories. It also allows for intertextual references. You will find both in this song.
The intertextual reference is in the third verse, just after the first chorus, where the song mentions that “once in a different sphere you were an unborn child.” The song “Unborn Child” (on From Here To Heaven) was written for my daughter Minna seventeen years ago.
A lot has happened since, as it must. And “You Shall Not Want For Love” is a song to reflect some of that and to reiterate a promise made while she was still in the womb, that somehow: “we will make it worth your while.”
The opening and closing lines of “You Shall Not Want For Love” paraphrases the Sufi poet Rumi who in the 13th century wrote that “the cure for the pain is in the pain.” But, as it goes in the song here, “I don’t know if that applies to you.” If course, that goes for any listener that engages with the song. I have tried to strike a balance where this song is for Minna, but it is also for anyone else who may be able to take something away from it – perhaps even take heart from it.
There’s a bigger article to be written about this song, and the adversity it alludes to, in time, but I wanted to share for now simply the song as it is. The recorded video is from the second run through of the “finished” song, so much may still change.
Listen to a first draft of “You Shall Not Want For Love” here
The song was written at a retreat for composers in Bargemon in the South of France, courtesy of DPA. I arrived and found the house guitar tuned to DADGAE . This inspired me to revisit some older songs written in the DADGAD tuning. (See also the post on this page about the song “Your New Wings”).
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