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Wired For: 🎧 Fenvian Child
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Running The Night Shift On Us
(Verse 1)
Sun goes down, I'm clocking in again
Drawing up blueprints on a dinner napkin
I built a porch swing from a photograph you liked
Painted the shutters while you slept through the whole night
Yeah, I'm forging futures out of hope and steel and sweat
Stacking up 'tomorrows' that we haven't gotten to yet
This whole house is humming with the things I've tried to build
But every room I finish, you refuse to have it filled.
(Pre-Chorus)
And the shelves are overloaded, it's a fire hazard here
All this inventory's gotta go somewhere, my dear
My heart's a foreman shouting, but the crew is just my soul
Yeah, this operation's running way outside control.
(Chorus)
I'm running the night shift on us, honey, can't you see the smoke?
Burning both ends of a promise that you never even spoke
This assembly line of loving, it's a wonder to behold
Producing for a market that is permanently cold
I'm running the night shift on us, for a market of one that's gone bust.
Yeah, everything's a surplus now but my trust.
(Verse 2)
I text you my affection, it sits on 'read and blue'
You're like a customs office that nothing gets through
Your side of the bed's a warehouse, empty, wide, and vast
A holding pattern for a feeling that won't last
I made a reservation for that place you said you missed
But you crossed it off the calendar with a cold, decisive wrist
You treat my grand gestures like they're just junk mail in the pile
I haven't seen you buy a single thing in a long, long while.
(Pre-Chorus)
And these feelings are all piling up, they're blocking out the sun
My production targets are the only thing that's done
I got a five-year plan for passion and a ten-year plan for two
But none of it means anything when I can't sell it to you.
(Chorus)
I'm running the night shift on us, honey, can't you see the smoke?
Burning both ends of a promise that you never even spoke
This assembly line of loving, it's a wonder to behold
Producing for a market that is permanently cold
I'm running the night shift on us, for a market of one that's gone bust.
Yeah, everything's a surplus now but my trust.
(Bridge)
This is a hostile takeover of my sanity
A leveraged buyout of the man I used to be
So I'm clocking out for good, I'm pulling the big switch now
Let the silence rust the gears of this grand design somehow
There's no last call, no final sale, no going out of business plea
Just killing the lights on this entire factory.
(Guitar Solo - Soaring, melodic, but full of feedback and pain)
(Chorus)
I *was* running the night shift on us, baby, look at all the smoke...
Burning my soul for a promise that you never even spoke
This assembly line is broken, it's a relic to behold
No longer shipping to a market that is permanently cold
Yeah, the night shift's over now, a quiet cloud of dust...
Nothing left for surplus now. Not even us.
About The Song
This song transforms the complex economic story of a nation's overproducing industrial sector and a stagnant domestic consumer market into a powerful, personal metaphor for a one-sided relationship. "Running The Night Shift On Us" paints the narrator as a relentless factory, working overtime to produce love, effort, and a shared future. Their partner, however, is the "dead market"—unresponsive, and unwilling to receive any of it. It taps into the universally painful experience of putting everything into someone who gives nothing back, not just as a passive feeling of neglect, but as the active, maddening work of producing for no one. The song's core is the narrator's Active Agency Mandate moment in the bridge: the decision to shut down production, not out of failure, but as a final act of self-preservation. It's a country-rock anthem for anyone who's ever realized they need to clock out of a loveless job.
Production Notes
Genre: Country Trap / Stadium Rock
Overall Vibe: Polished grit. The gloss of a modern Nashville hit with the rhythmic underbelly of Atlanta trap and the raw power of 70s rock.
Vocals: Use a Neumann U87 for pristine clarity. Chain: Neve 1073 preamp (driven slightly hot for warmth) -> Tube-Tech CL1B Compressor (gentle 2:1 ratio).
• Verse Vocals: Intimate, close-mic'd, with a near-spoken rhythmic delivery. Minimal reverb. Let the natural vocal texture carry the narrative.
• Chorus Vocals: Belted and full. Triple-track the main line: one perfect take centered, one take panned 40% left, one take panned 40% right (sing these with slight variations for thickness). Add two harmony layers high and low, panned wide.
Instrumentation & Arrangement:
• Verse: Driven by a tight, palm-muted Martin D-28 acoustic guitar line and a syncopated TR-808 hi-hat/snare pattern. A low, pulsing Moog-style synth bass enters on the second half of each verse.
• Pre-Chorus: Build tension. The acoustic opens up, introduce a filtered, delayed electric guitar playing a simple arpeggio. Automate a subtle phaser on the hi-hats.
• Chorus: Explodes into full stadium rock. Big, live Bonham-style drums. Two heavily distorted Gibson Les Pauls playing complementing power chord riffs, panned hard left and right. A clean, soaring lap steel guitar plays a counter-melody over the top. The Moog bass becomes a driving, unfiltered root-note engine.
• Bridge: Strip it back. High-pass filter everything except the lead vocal and a clean, shimmering electric guitar. Create a feeling of isolation and decision. On the line "killing the lights," cut everything to silence for a full beat before crashing back into the final chorus.
Mix Notes: Aggressively automate the stereo field. Verses are tight and centered. The chorus should feel enormous, pushing the guitars and harmonies out wide. Use parallel compression on the drum bus to make them hit hard without losing dynamics. The final line "Not even us" should end with a long, decaying reverb tail that gets cut off abruptly.
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