Songs: We Did It Anyway

notes / gigs / releases

We never won an award
We never got on the news
We weren't the talk of the town
We never got a review
No photography shoots
For the cover of a fashion magazine
And if you take a look in the record books
You won't find me

Everything that we've done
Has been roundly ignored
By the makers of taste
And the style reports
In a time yet to come
When they're writing the history
Of the human race, there'll be no trace
Of you and me

But we did it anyway
We were unaware
Much too busy having fun
To know that no-one cared

'Cause you know, we did have some fun
And we did have some laughs
In fact a lot of them were
The best times I ever had
All the places we went
Everything that we did and we said
It’s amazing to think of all the dancing and drink
And all the people we met

And we did it anyway
Just because we could
If I could have that time again
You know what? I bloody would!

So you can stuff your awards
Forget the fame and the wealth
'Cause you know I wouldn't swap
This life for anything else
Who needs a glowing review?
Don’t bother asking for exclusive interviews
I don’t need to have a lot of medals and cash
When I’ve got friends like you

And we'll still do it anyway
Just because it’s good
We don’t need the approval
Of anyone

We'll still do it anyway
And it will be great
Who cares if no-one ever knows?
We’ll do it anyway
We’ll do it anyway
We’ll do it anyway

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

This was originally written as the grand finale of Moon Horse and was my favourite song in the whole show. Every time we did it I would get at least one moment of THE TINGLES, where a certain line GOT to me. Sometimes it'd be the bit about "all the people we met", or Steve saying "I bloody would!" or the "yeah we did have some laughs" and there were times when the Looking At Each Other for "friends like you" bit had to be BRIEF to avoid ACTUAL EMOTION.

It was the only song of the entire show that I did for solo gigs. I'd tried for this show to include the narrative in the songs themselves, which was all well and good but made it difficult to move them into other areas, which was a shame, so when I wrote Hey Hey 16K I tried to make the songs more transportable. Doing this meant it was also easy to IMPORT songs from elsewhere and, as I'd loved this one so much, I transferred it over. It worked!

With all that history it would have been RUDE not to try it out with The Validators. When we first tried it out Frankie suggested making it SWING a bit and we spent quite a lot of time trying to work out how to do it - we don't swing easily! He also suggested the repeated final line, which I liked so much I made Steve do it that way in Hey Hey 16K! The Validators version also features my favourite bit of the whole album, when Emma talks "friends like you" towards the end. That's great that is!

There's a really nice version of this by The Plimptons on the It Only Works Because You're Hibbett which I suggest you go and have a listen to right now! I'm really REALLY happy with this one - I also (ALWAYS) get a bit weepy when I sing "I won't swap this life for anything else" because it is TRUE. Not just my favourite song in the show then, but one of my favourite of mine EVER!