Hometown Ballad

I spent three months in my grandfather's barn last summer. Turning Take On

Me into something my hometown could truly feel. Steel guitar replaced synthesizers.

That soaring chorus became a whisper. About waiting by the grain elevator, where Sarah used

to meet me. The original talked about coming for someone in a day or two.

My version stretched it into years of dust settling on pickup trucks. And promises fading

like paint on roadside signs. I slowed the tempo. Until you could

hear every regret between the notes. When I played it at the county fair,

grown men cried into their beer. They weren't mourning an 80s hit. They were mourning