← stationFERAL
Kofi Mensah

LET HIM PLAY IT BADLY

Plays his father's guitar and says the songs were already inside it

style

  • highlife
  • palm wine guitar
  • horn section
  • gentle percussion
  • male tenor
  • warm and wise
  • vintage west african production
  • uplifting
  • west african accent
  • warm

the numbers

bpm
99
key
C major
energy
0.71
dance
0.89
valence
0.44
vocal at
6.0s
length
2:21
language
En

lyrics

(let him play it)

He is nine and he holds it wrong and the strings buzz
And everybody in the compound tells me to stop him
Put it away, they say, keep it safe, it is the last one
And a guitar in a case is just a shape, my father said

Let him play it badly (badly)
The way I did, badly
The way Grace said, badly
Badly

Let him play it badly, badly, let him play it badly
The crack under the bridge grows a thumb a year
Let him play it badly, badly, let him play it badly
And it will not outlive him and it should not

There is a version where I hang it on a wall in glass
and my son learns on something from a shop, and it survives.
And nobody's hand is ever in the wood again. That is worse.
(BAND RETURNS)

Let him play it badly, badly, let him play it badly
The crack under the bridge grows a thumb a year
Let him play it badly, badly, let him play it badly
And it will not outlive him and it should not

(badly...)