Behind The Song: One Three Nine

Like the other pro life songs I wrote last summer, One Three Nine was written and recorded in little over a week. I found with this song especially that having a time limit was freeing, forcing me make snap decision rather than getting mired in chasing elusive possibilities.

I’ve wanted to chop up a classical composition and use the chords to create a new song for a long time. As ‘Ase’s Death’ by Edvard Grieg is almost entirely chords I thought it would make an ideal starting point. The original piece, from the play Peer Gynt, is a lament and seemed like a good match for the lyrics.

I spent two days sifting through five different recordings and chopping them up but the process proved too complex because I wanted to change the time signature from 4/4 to ¾, put it in a lower key, discarded one section and invert the remaining two. So in the end I borrowed the score from the public library and played all the parts in myself on a mini keyboard. In between trips to the library I worked on the song by playing the chords as best as I could on guitar.

The lyrics are a paraphrase of Psalm 139: 13-16

Each stanza contrasts the view that the unborn are human beings made in the image of God with the view that they are ‘things’ that we may remove and dispose of as we see fit.

You knit me together there, my maker
Deep in my mother's womb
But they found the place where you hid me
And dragged me out.


There in the hidden depths you wove me
Such intricate handiwork
But they unpicked each strand, in clinical
Man-made light.

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Read the full lyrics


Other pro-life songs
Your Difficult Decision
Salt Water
First Black President