Story Behind The Song

This beautiful song, which tells the story of an artist who was so overwhelmed by the beauty and pain in the world that he took his own life, always struck me to be too happy for its story. So I kept the lyrics but totally changed the music, to create a sadder, more melancholy sound.

Song Description

Don McClean's "Vincent" retold in a more melancholy fashion. I re-wrote the entire musical structure, maintaing only the lyrics.

Lyrics

Vincent

Verse 1
Starry Starry night
Paint your pallet blue and grey
Look out on a summer?s day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on a hill
Sketch the trees and daffodils
Catch the breeze and winter chills
On colors on a snowy linen land
And now I understand

Verse 2
Starry starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflecting Vincent?s eyes of china blue
Colors changing hue
The morning fields of amber grain
The weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist?s loving hand

Chorus
And now I understand
what you tried to say to me
and how you suffered for your sanity
how you tried to set them free
but they would not listen cause they did not know how

Bridge
For they could not love you but still your love was true
And when no hope was left in sight on that starry starry night
You took your life like lovers often do
But if I could have told you Vincent what I knew
That this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you
As you

Verse 3
Starry starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that know the world and can?t forget
Like the strangers that you met
The ragged men in ragged clothes ? the silver thorn of bloody rose
Crushed and broken on the virgin snow

Chorus
And now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
But they would not listen cause they did not know how