"Destroy All That Is Keeping You Back"

Sean McGhee writes the blog: It's been non-stop here at Canonical, although from our not-quite-as-daily-as-we-promised reports, you may think otherwise. Far from it! We've had a couple of tough days with Song 4, which was proving to be hard to get just right. And, so it will remain, because we've decided it's just not right for this record, so off it goes! We gave it a good chance, but in the end Rob felt there were stronger songs on the record that were similarly themed but better expressed. Strangely, it felt like a weight had been lifted - sometimes, you have to be cruel to be kind.

Sean was working very hard when this photo was taken,
hence only being able to see the back of his head.

Where does that leave us, you ask yourself? Far from idle, I answer. We went for lunch, then had a think about writing something new, and came up with something that might just plug the gap. It's only an hour old as I type, but it feels like it's really got something special about it. So, our plan tomorrow is to get it properly knocked into shape so we can decide its future!

What I said the other day about not being precious can be as true for a whole song as it can be for single part. On the way to this album, we wrote an awful lot of songs. Not all of them can be right at the top of the A list, and you have to be brutal when you choose what's going to make it to the final album. We can normally tell quite quickly if an idea is just not strong enough, and cut it loose accordingly. Alternatively, you might labour over a song for a few days only to find that the whole is less than the sum of the parts. And if it's not right, you either have to fix it or let it go!

So, we're a song down, but better to focus on the great moments. Let's see how the newest new song sounds first thing tomorrow...