Penny in the Wishing Well

Introducing the newest addition to my blog: From The Archives! I am so excited about this new series of posts of old songs I've written over the years. I thought it might be fun to go back every so often, and relearn, record, and share a bunch of my older original songs from when I was in high school. This is where the bulk of my songs came from and where my songwriting really began to take shape. They all still hold so much meaning to me and surprise me by how much they apply even still.

For the first 'installment' I bring you, "Penny In The Wishing Well'. If I could go back and choose any of my songs from "the archives", to have recorded and produced, it would hands down be this one!

So for each of these "archived" songs, I want to go into the story behind the song... Penny In the Wishing Well was a style inspired after Haley Reinhart who was a contestant on American Idol at the time I wrote it. I loved the sultry sound to her voice and her range and control was simply something to be admired. Because of how much I had been listening to her, I instinctively started to adopt her style in small doses as I sang.

The meaning behind the lyrics in this song is essentially the whole, "the grass is greener on the other side" idea. I felt like by end of my senior year in high school, which was the time I wrote this song, I looked back at my high school experience as a whole and realized many of the things I had "wanted" were the way things now were. It was this self discovery of being capable of doing anything I put my mind to and how powerful that felt. I was also realizing however, that just because I had the capability to get what I wanted at times, there was a greater power in exercising self restraint by evaluating those "wants" or "wishes" and trying to weed out what I really needed. What would ultimately benefit me the most.

In the bridge I go into this whole idea that makes everything a little more complex. It was this second realization that by the time I had the first realization or discovery, things already were as they were. I would wish I could go back and change those "wishes" or "wants", realizing they weren't really what I wanted; the irony being that I wanted to just stop wishing for and wanting things and start making the most of what I had. To really take ownership and control over my own life. But still being stuck in this cycle of wishing to go back instead of taking it head on and moving forward. Basically a lot of complex thoughts that even now are hard for me to untangle and articulate. That's when putting those thoughts into a song really comes in handy.

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Penny In The Wishing Well

Too tired to wait

Too weak to stand

I feel so lost and buried in the sand

I keep on tryin' to speak to the stars

They make me believe the planets aligned and I'm seeing Mars

I keep on wishing

Wishing for all my dreams to come true

I threw a penny in the wishing well

Then down, down I fell

I made a wish and then it came true

Then I wished I hadn't threw

The penny in the wishing well

Wishing well

I could have anything I wanted

Baby I've got it

But real power comes from within restraint

It'll give me strength

Stop, stop, looking for signs

They only make me blind

I keep on wishing

Wishing for all my dreams to come true

I threw a penny in the wishing well

Then down, down I fell

I made a wish and then it came true

Then I wished I hadn't threw

The penny in the wishing well

Wishing well

One day I woke up and found I had all I wanted

Suddenly I saw it's not what I needed

And maybe I'm crazy to say no more wishing

Then I wish to go back but I can't so why not

Make it last

I keep on wishing

Wishing for all my dreams to come true

I threw a penny in the wishing well

Then down, down I fell

I made a wish and then it came true

Then I wished I hadn't threw

The penny in the wishing well

Wishing well