lifeblood: songs: backgrounds: lung of love

amy ray quote from 2012-01-18: amy ray's 'lung of love' to rock local shows, project q atlanta

"the lung of love is my singing voice," ray says. "that is what comes out of me; but always in a struggle with its own clumsiness and frailty."

amy ray quote from 2012-01-23: amy ray's 'lung of love' streets february 28th, 2012, the grateful web

"i have a compass-morally, physically-and i am pulled in different directions," she says. "i was thinking about how these opposite urges create stress and clumsiness in our lives."

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amy ray quote from 2012-02-24: lung of love: a conversation with amy ray, the huffington post

mr: lung of love?

ar: yeah?

mr: what's behind that title and song?

ar: the title i got from the song that's on the record lung of love. it encompassed the song for me because it refers to my voice and our ability to be in the world and express ourselves through song or through breathing or through whatever you do and what keeps you alive as well as what hinders you. your physicality is this great thing, but it is also the thing that makes you clumsy and limits you in the world, so to speak. that song was about that, and then i thought that would be a cool album title that reflects some of the other songs as well, or reflects the human condition, for me anyway. i'm not fully clear yet, sometimes i have something in my head and i can't quite articulate it yet, and it takes me a few months to figure out what i meant in some ways, or to explain what i meant. i'm still working on it.

mr: personally, i think some of the best works have an evolution in interpretation.

ar: yeah, i think that's true.

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amy ray quote from 2012-03-01: amy ray digs deep into the lung of love, glide magazine

tell me more about the title track, "lung of love," since this concept of your voice- of yourself conveyed through that medium, either to the world, or someone else- continues to be a theme through the album. when did that song come into being?

i actually wrote the lyrics for that quite a while ago, and i didn't have the music for it, but it was an idea that i really liked and wanted to work with. i didn't initially think of it as a motif for the record, though. i started writing the music, and greg helped me finish the chorus, but after we recorded it and i was able to stand back and think about what made all the song hang together, i started thinking about this idea of living and breathing- the physicality of life- versus that place where your mind doesn't want to be held back, or your spirit can't get beyond the confines of what you can do physically. but, even so, it's a pretty loosely held together group of songs, as far as finding a thread that was really common, but that was definitely the one that i was drawn to. probably because it's me- this album representing the way i feel about life, and it's my solo voice, so i guess that's where i ended up approaching that discussion.

there's a part of the song, too, that is about me wanting to be in two places at once. i want to be able to do this, and show you that i love you and do that as well, but then there's all these things that are holding me back physically, just like every human being. so, all i can say is that i sing, and i breathe, and that's how i show my love.