Paradise Lost
Behind the writing and creation of my new single: opera, apocalypse and adulthood
On the 31st July, my 18th birthday, I released my new single Paradise Lost! This post goes behind the scenes into some of the process involved in writing & creating the song. I hope you enjoy it!
Last September, I went across London to a pub garden in Deptford to see an opera adaptation of John Milton’s poem Paradise Lost, which takes the biblical story of the fall of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden and stretches it out into a 700 page free verse epic. Seeing it performed made me want to try and adapt the poem into a song, using Eve’s lament, which appears towards the end as she and Adam are being cast out of Eden. In the version I saw, almost the entire poem was sung, besides for the lament which was done in spoken word:
“Oh unexpected stroke, worse than of death!
Must I thus leave thee, Paradise? thus leave
Thee, native soil, these happy walks and shades
Fit haunt of Gods? where I had hope to spend
Quiet though sad, the respite of that day
That must be mortal to us both. Oh flowers
That never will in other climate grow
My early visitation, and my last
At even, which I bred up with tender hand
From the first opening bud, and gave ye names
Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank
Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount?
Thee lastly, nuptial bower, by me adorned
With what to sight or smell was sweet, from thee
How shall I part, and whither wander down
Into a lower world; to this obscure
And wild? how shall we breathe in other air
Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits?”
It’s a passage that I thought had a pretty universal impact, and almost sounded almost like a breakup or goodbye song, because of how Eve talks about paradise using metaphor and poetic description instead of literally/directly addressing it. In my Paradise Lost, “Paradise” doesn’t literally refer to the garden of eden like in Milton’s poem, but switches between being about a place and a person nicknamed Paradise - I tried to adapt the idea of “must I leave thee, paradise? thus leave thee, native soil” into a song about leaving my home, childhood and friends behind.
For context, the year or so I spent writing and producing this song, I’d been getting ready to finally leave London and move to New York for college. Most of the songs I wrote during that period are hopeful for the future, but are sad since they look back at the rootlessness and isolation of that time, so I wanted to write at least one song that could be dedicated to the bits of my past that I will miss, imaging those times as if they were a sort of eden, even if they weren’t.
In order to subvert the original meaning of the poem, I mixed in lines from the original poem with my own, written in a similar style to try and make the lyrics cohere together. Paradise Lost actually has a long history of being repurposed and reimagined (even the original poem itself was a metaphor for the failure of England’s republican commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell), whether it was William Blake’s poem “Milton” where he reinvents the poet into a prophetic figure, or in the first place I heard the passage - the song When We Shall Touch by Lift to Experience. When We Shall Touch is part of the cult classic album “The Texas Jerusalem Crossroads”, a (now) cult classic 2000s shoegaze concept album about judgement day, with Texas as the promised land and setting of biblical apocalypse. In the song, Josh T Pearson recites Eve’s Lament as a spoken word piece over pounding Post-Rock/shoegaze instrumentation.
On the instrumental side of things, the song started out as an entirely acoustic track and slowly built up over time to have a much larger climax and coda, adding violin, cello and accordion into the mix, while keeping the stripped back feeling in the verses. I wrote the entire song before recording it to focus on songwriting over the production-based songs on my first album, which led to the dreamy, ambient-influenced production style of my first record being replaced with a more natural and punchy sound inspired a litttle by the production style of Sufjan Steven’s “Illinois”, Black Country New Road and others.
The cover art was taken from an illustrated version of Paradise Lost etched by Gustave Dore in 1885. There are a bunch of different illustrated versions of the poem (including one by William Blake), but Dore’s is my favourite and most dramatic, so I felt it would be a good fit for the cover art.
This song is definitely the ending of an era - of childhood, London and Sounds of the Scrubland, but it’s also the start of a new one! Of college and New York and new beginnings, and a new sound. It’s a taster of what’s to come as the first single from my sophmore (2nd) album, which should hopefully be coming out early next year. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this single! <3 - Jackie
Paradise Lost is out now on all streaming platforms!
Paradise Lost Lyrics (lines from Paradise Lost by Milton are in italics):
Oh paradise, my sweet paradise The paradigm is set or so I am told Not your given name, but the one that I gave you when We found our eden we would never grow old Farewell happy fields, the joy of which I must now leave The sweet recess of memory I’ll cherish for so long Must I leave thee? “It was never going to be easy” You said to me sweetly as I left my only home Paradise lost Unfashionable sacrifice, departing was the most painful thing I have often haunted the halls of our memories in an effort to see what facsimile Of what we had I could build up in my mind but I can’t forget the cost My voice began quivering and my words came out meek and soft Our sweet recess and only consolation left Accustomed to immortal fruits I found myself bereft To live in these wild woods forlorn it was an early death I clung onto you waiting for the end with bated breath Cause I was a kid and I am still a kid A child asking “do you still believe in me?” Must I thus leave thee, paradise? Thus leave thee native soil These happy walks and shades Fit haunt of Gods where I had hoped to spend Quiet though sad the respite of that day That must be mortal to us both Oh flowers that will never in other climate grow My early visitation and my last
this is my favorite song