30 Songs in 30 Days – Day Two – Hurt Another Day

The second song in my 30 Songs in 30 Days project is Hurt Another Day:

I think I wrote Hurt Another Day when I was at Manchester Polytechnic in the 80’s but I forget exactly. Some of these songs were written so long ago I can’t remember writing them. I know I first recorded it about 14 years ago in a home studio in Streatham, because it’s part of an album of songs called Pop Happenings Volume 4 that I cobbled together from all the serviceable recordings I had at my disposal at that point. That version of Hurt Another Day, which you can hear here, comes complete with drums, bass, a bit of piano and tambourine, which keeps it moving along nicely, I think. (I’m normally rubbish at tambourine). It’s a fun song to sing, especially when it gets to the chorus. Not that you’d know it from this performance, where I was so preoccupied by keeping it together and maintaining the tempo without speeding up while at the same time remembering the lyrics and not fouling up on the chords that I forgot to enjoy myself. But that’s part of what this project is about – improving my ability until I can take a base level of competence for granted, so I can concentrate on the performance. That, I am assuring myself, is just a function of practicing. So that’s exactly what I’m going to go and do now!