This was my third Song Fight! entry, and I was finally starting to get at least a semblance of a recording setup. At this point I’d bought a cheap 4-track tape deck and actually played the guitar part all the way through and sang everything each in one take.
It was still pretty awful and I was still learning how to do basically anything with acoustic recordings. But I was getting somewhere with it, at least.
In 2006 I started the Plus 5 project, where I decided to re-record all of my first-year Song Fight! entries on the fifth anniversary of their original due dates. I LOVE YOU and Repair My Heart both came out reasonably well (and those new versions were the conceptual basis for the versions on this album), but Shipwreck still came out pretty badly, and I started to think that the song itself was cursed.
For this album, I originally started out trying to do a better job of the Plus 5 version, but it still just plain wasn’t working. I was starting to wonder if I even wanted this song on this album to begin with, and like it was just irredeemably bad and not worth trying to save.
But then I had a realization: there’s nothing that says I had to stick to my plan from 2006. It’s my song, and my choice for how to do things, right?
So I changed the arrangement significantly, and decided to lean fully into the idea that it’s a song about desperate isolation.
I think it works.
It was a three-hour tour Looks like it’s gonna be more Now I’m stranded far from you And it looks like there’s nothing to do
I need someone to come Doesn’t matter where they are from I see a ship on the edge of my view And I’m hoping that it is you
Come on and rescue me I’m drowning, can’t you see that I Really need you all of the time so come Come on and rescue me
I am alone with nobody around It feels like I’ll never be found I have to hold on one more day To see if someone is coming my way
It was a three-hour tour Looks like it’s gonna be more Now I’m stranded far from you And I’m hoping that it is you
Come on and rescue me I’m drowning, can’t you see that I Really need you all of the time, so come Come on and rescue me
Come on and rescue me I’m begging for you to find me, and I Really need you all of the time, so come Come on and rescue me