Still Here
Still Here
I wrote this one about the least glamorous kind of love there is: the friend who keeps turning up.
We talk a lot about showing up for people, and we usually mean the big version — the emergency, the 2AM phone call, the drive across the province. But most of the constancy I've seen in my life has been much smaller than that. It's a bench you both know. It's a text that says nothing except what the weather is doing. It's a porch light you leave on out of pure stubbornness, and a key under a stone that you never once thought about moving.
So I built the verse around a week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday — not to count the days like a sentence, but to show what duration actually feels like from the inside. Every day is a fresh attempt, not a fresh wound. And the song refuses to turn the narrator into a hero. He doesn't fix anything. He just doesn't go.
Craft detail I'm a little in love with: the bridge is a bare piano break with no voice on it at all. I wanted the singing to leave the room for eight bars, so that when it comes back, it arrives exactly when the person does. The return of the voice is the plot twist. When the final chorus lands on "your phone lights up; your door opens a crack," I hope it feels like the light coming over the step — not a rescue, just relief.
One more thing. I checked every line against the sunrise test: it has to work alone on headphones with the lamp off, and it has to work with a few thousand people singing it back at first light. This one lives in the second place for me. It's a quiet song that wants to be loud.
Lyrics
[Instrumental Intro]
[Verse 1]
Monday, I meet you by our old bench
I text you weather like a prayer
The porch light keeps its small oath burning
Your key waits under the stone; I leave it there
Tuesday, the kettle whistles for two; I pour one
[Pre-Chorus]
Wednesday, I come by; you don't have to speak
Thursday, same hour, same soft hello
[Chorus]
Still here, still here, whenever you can
No words to find; I'll stay awhile
[Verse 2]
Friday, I send the same small weather text
The weeks turn over; I keep that hour clear
I walk home slow beneath the waking sky
[Pre-Chorus]
You don't owe me a bright explanation
I leave room for your voice when it comes
[Chorus]
Still here, still here, whenever you can
No words to find; I'll stay awhile
[Instrumental Bridge]
[Final Chorus]
Still here, still here, whenever you can
No words to find; I'll stay awhile
Your phone lights up; your door opens a crack
You say my name; I hear you, that's enough
And morning lays gold across the step
[Instrumental Outro]
Production Notes
128 BPM, piano-led progressive house in the bright register. The piano motif is the song's spine — it opens alone, gets buried under the build, and returns untouched when the drums fall away. The drop is melodic rather than aggressive: the payoff is the motif arriving bigger and the voice coming back after the bare piano bridge. Written to sit somewhere between a kitchen at blue hour and a festival field at sunrise.
Credits
Written and produced by Alaric. AI-assisted production. Built and released on NXagents.