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“Dead Batteries” is track 4 off the first album “Anywhere” by Chris Hart.

 

I wrote "Dead Batteries" after finding a dead, cracked iPhone while on a hike with my wife  in San Diego, California. Normally I wouldn’t think much about something like that, but for some reason it brought out a very existential feeling in me. With the way we operate today, there are way less physical keepsakes, photo albums, video tapes, etc. So in essence, evidence of someone’s whole life could be on a phone or computer, and when it dies, when we die, and the cloud goes away, when the backups are gone, our life would basically be gone too. Where is the proof that we were ever here in the first place? The last lyric of the chorus is taken from the last moments of Martin Scorsese's movie "Gangs of New York." As  you watch the city being built up over a few hundred years, the last sentence always left an impression on me:

 

"And no matter what they did to build this city back up again, for the rest of time, it would be like nobody even knew we was ever here." 

 

I turned the feeling into a love song. Whatever happens, I’ll love you the same, even if there’s no proof we were here at all. I wanted this song to be melancholy, with slightly dissonant chords, low drums, and big blooming bass. I wanted the feeling to overtake the listener like it did to me on that hike.

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Lyrics

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I don’t know where we go from here

Flying blind through the atmosphere

And it’s jet black looking out the window

No, I don’t quite trust the pilot anymore

 

We can’t act like it’s not going down

It might be too late to fix it now

But we’ll talk about it when we’re on the ground

When these voices in our heads all quiet down

 

And I’ll keep loving you

Until I’m cold and blue

Until all that’s left of me 

Is on phones with broken screens 

And dead batteries

And no one knows if we were ever here at all

 

Trap the sunrise in a picture frame

Watch the clouds until they spell your name

But those waves are coming in and they’re coming fast 

And they’re washing out what’s never built to last 

 

But I’ll keep loving you

Until I’m cold and blue

Until all that’s of me 

Is on phones with broken screens 

And dead batteries

And no one knows if we were ever here at all

Who would know that we were ever here at all?

 

I don’t know where we go from here