Basket

The Canadian singer-songwriter had written this song while riding the bus in Vancouver about two weeks after his grandfather passed away. In 2009, Mangan spoke to The Telegraph about this song's meaning. "I watched my grandfather recede into memory loss," he said. "He didn't have Alzheimer's, but he certainly had something. He would confuse me with my brother and all the stories he would tell us when we were little kids that we didn't want to hear about, by the time we got to be adults and we were more interested in those stories, he was losing it. So it dawned on me this analogy of your life as a basket. Your whole life your gathering experiences and stories and things you've undertaken putting those all inside the basket and that basket it becomes you and you are the culmination of everything you've ever done and everything that you've ever seen or witnessed. So I was picturing my grandfather's basket falling apart and things were falling out of it. I thought that was fairly tragic. It's a sad song, but I feel like there's some redemption to it. It can be avoided. You can hold onto those memories. I think people should do crosswords. I think my grandparents were tired and they sat and watched TV for a couple of decades. I just can't picture doing that. I feel like having a reason to get up and go out and meet people is a good thing."

In a Reddit Q&A in 2015, Mangan revealed that both of his grandparents died within a year of each other and what watching their health deteriorate taught him: "They were really loving and good to me, and I have a lot of fond memories of them, but I want to stay alert and active and have friends and find things to love and get crazy about for as long as possible, so the song is kind of like 'your life is this basket full of memories, and what happens if the basket starts to fall apart and the memories fall out, are you still YOU?'.. It's just about maintaining an appreciation for life and fighting for honesty and beauty in every moment, because at that point, things like death aren't that scary, because it's just the next step on the journey."

These lyrics display well Mangan's desire to live a full and active life: So I'll go but I'm telling you I don't wanna go Could be stuck here and happy So there's a puzzle I work on endlessly And I've got the sides and all the corners But there's a space Yeah there's a space Lost some pieces I can't replace So I'll be but I'm telling you I don't wanna be Just a wasted puzzle piece