My Inspiration: Blame Yourself – Pillars

North-East emo outfit Blame Yourself drop their latest track Pillars. The song’s more reflective verses burst into big choruses which creates an engaging dynamic rich in bold beats, impassioned vocals and expansive guitar.

Here, singer Nic Wood, tells us what inspired this latest offering…

I remember sitting down to write lyrics to this song thinking ‘shit…I’ve got nothing’. In fact it’s something I did on at least three separate occasions. I would stare at a blank Word (okay fine, you got me, Open Office!) document for a few minutes, spiral into self loathing, and then shut my laptop and do something else with the rest of my day.

Our guitarist Andy had done such an incredible job writing the music, but for some reason I just wasn’t connecting with the song. Polite reminders from the band like ‘hey, how are lyrics coming along for that new track? I bet it’s going to sound class!’ after a few weeks became more, shall we say, terse in their tone. It got to the point where I just had to write down anything, even if it was bad. So I did. I used the energy of how the track was making me feel.

I felt so frustrated with myself that I couldn’t compliment Andy’s music with the words they deserved. This was something I was supposed to be good at, something I had devoted my life to, and it seemed like the ability had left me. I felt like a complete failure. A loser.

So that was the first draft of the song. It was called ‘Loser’. The first line of the song perfectly sums up how I didn’t want to be in the situation I found myself in.

‘Good God, what I wouldn’t give, just to trade it in. To cash it and call it.’

The chorus was an ode to some of my stoner friends, that British society had once deemed deadbeats, but is now basically cultural normalcy.

‘We’re losers, pointless and high, a monument to nothing, an insult to the island’

I quickly finished it just so I had something to sing at practice and left it at that. But then after a few days I started thinking more about my ‘deadbeat’ friends. My stoner friends, my neurodivergent friends, my friends that talk too much but have a heart of gold, my friends that like Disney and Death Metal in equal measure, my incredibly talented musician friends… They’re all beautiful, wonderful human beings. And they are all, every single one of them, weird as hell. I just suddenly felt so thankful that my weird self managed to meet their weird selves. Because being weird can be exhilarating, but can also be really lonely. When you’re surrounded by a sea of people that you feel so different from, it can be exhausting. To constantly stick out like a sore thumb, to be an unwanted pillar constantly there and in the way.

And that is when the final draft of the lyrics took shape. Suddenly ‘We’re pillars, pointless and high…’ made so much sense. To change the emphasis of the song from pejorative to an anthem for those who felt just like me was exactly what was needed.

I’m so glad that this has become the song that it has, and it’s one of my favourites to sing. When I introduce this song live I say to the crowd ‘give me a cheer if you’re weird’, and literally everyone cheers. Because everyone feels isolated or misunderstood at least sometimes, and I’m so glad I get to sing a song for them, so that they can feel a part of this weird, emo thing we’ve got going on called Blame Yourself.