Set me free

Lyrics : Ian Forbes

Music : Peter Nuttall

Date Written : 13th June 1995

Album : Citadel EP (Released June 1995)

Everyone has a natural internal rhythm. Whether that's something innate or something that grows in you when you gravitate towards a certain type of music (which could be because of your innate internal rhythm), I think you can't hide the natural gravity inside you when it comes to genres of music. I've seen the most unassuming people who look like they like nothing more than a cup of tea and some light classical music, crack out some Prodigy or AC/DC.

I like upbeat, straight 4/4 or 12/8 pop. I love music from hundreds of genres but I'll always go back to something that could have won Eurovision in the 80s. However, if I do have an inner song, one that was written by the part of me that resonates most closely with my personal rhythm; if I could plug some headphones into my soul and hear what it was doing - it would be 'Set Me Free'.

The intro is disjointed, the rhythm syncopates across measures, the melody isn't whistlable, it has single bar bridges where you think they should have at least two and the outro is an improvised mess of words which don't really mean anything. This is my soul.

The majesty of this song however is the fact it was written as one of five songs in two days that became the Citadel EP at the start of June 1995. The lyrics came from a file Ian gave me with a lot of loose lyric ideas, diary entries and couplets. The things I was going though at the time were there on several of the pages. Mainly stuff Ian had written down after listening to Gary Numan's Telekon album. Each word, each sentence and rhyme was like it was telling me exactly how I was feeling.  'Innocent prisoner of my own greed', 'This prison has no walls, someone set me free, you're the eye that cannot see itself, it sees through me' and 'while other lights shine so pale, yours is the only one I can see ... leave me now, set me free'.  There's definitely some genius in there.

We re-recorded the Citadel EP right after completing the 'Light is a feather' album in 2009 and it was a good time to do it. We were better at production and were using a digital workstation with midi instruments so everything sounded crisp and clean. The new version of Set Me Free is choppy and precise. One thing I've always loved about Erasure's early records is how to-the-front the synths are. They don't hide - they're the main drive in the song. Like 'here I am' instead of accompanying, they're the main event. Set me Free is a bit like that. The Citadel EP also had 'Deja Vu' on it, which was a sister song to this and a wonderfully dark brooding song called 'Stone' which was again taken from Ian's file. He'd written some Sting lyrics in there; 'Jealous moon in it's jeaous sky'. I didn't know they were Sting lyrics and I took them and changed them to 'Shaded haze, silver moon's Crown'. Good job really.