Life Got In The Way

Life happens. And during the course of it, sometimes people allow the little things to alter their perception of what is important. "I had been talking to somebody," says singer/songwriter Ken Block, "and just in conversation we were talking about how as things unfold in your life, things come sort of stacking in different piles around you. And in that conversation, I said, 'Man, life gets in the way.' And I stopped, and that line just hung with me." So he approached Richard Marx, with whom he was co-writing, and told him about the song idea. Their co-writing effort on this song took form as a "kind of relationship song," says Block, "where it's easy when things are simple, but as things build and life gets in the way, whether it's finances or work or kids or all those different things, the deepest love can be tripped up by things that start to stack up against us. And so it's about remembering; going back and daring somebody to forget. I mean, 'How dare you not remember where the foundation of this was?' This is just life that's getting in the way. This shouldn't be enough to rock things." "There's a line in there, 'I wanted us to be the ones the poets write the books about,' and it gets to that point where I see so many people around me who go through the same pattern: they fall in love, and things go great for a long time, and then when things get hard, they bail, instead of working through that and realizing that that's what life is. That's how you get to the next level is working through that stuff. Because if you don't, you start it over again and then it's just like 'lather, rinse, repeat.' Until you get through there, you just keep repeating that cycle." "Sometimes," advises Block, "you have to be reminded of what's really real, what's important." (Read more in our interview with Ken Block.)