Count the Ways

“Let Me Count the Ways” is a song about something I’ve always found beautiful about falling in love: the private language two people create together. The silly nicknames, the little expressions, the looks that say everything without a word. Somehow, two people can take ordinary words and give them meanings that belong to no one else. Parts of this song were written many years ago, inspired by a relationship from another chapter of my life. That chapter ended long before the life I have today, and revisiting it to create the music and video was sometimes uncomfortable. Not because I want to return to that time, but because recreating emotions from another life can feel strange when you’re happily living a very different one. One of the things I discovered while producing this song was how dramatically the choice of vocalist can change a composition. I hadn’t originally imagined it with female vocals, but when I heard it sung by a woman, something clicked. The tenderness, the playfulness, even the way her voice rises and falls brought out something I hadn’t quite captured before. There’s something about the way our voices change when we’re falling in love, especially during those early, wonderful months when everything is new. Our pitch changes, our words soften, and sometimes we sound almost like different people. Certain female voices capture that feeling beautifully. And that’s why I believe this song is meant to be sung by a woman, they are the ones that bring it out of us. I’ve since learned to consider the vocalist’s gender when developing melodies, because sometimes changing the voice can completely transform a song. Today, I’m fortunate to share my life with my wife, the greatest love I’ve ever known, and together we’re raising our three boys. We have our own private language, of course. It’s different from the language of young love. It’s been shaped by marriage, parenthood, shared experiences, and all the trials and tribulations that come with building a life together. Our life got real very quickly. Our eldest son is autistic. When he was born, he spent thirteen days in the NICU. Those were thirteen days of extraordinary fear and uncertainty for both of us. And then came everything that followed: the challenges, the discoveries, the worries, the little victories, and the extraordinary experience of watching our boys grow into the people they’re becoming. That’s a different kind of love story. It’s not just about the excitement of falling in love. It’s about what happens when two people build a life together, face things they never imagined facing, and continue choosing each other through it all. And yes, we still have our silly names for each other. We still have our private language. We still get to be childish sometimes. For about 10 minutes between our children falling asleep and us following suit. There’s “Home Team.” There’s “Hippo.” And there are countless little things that would mean absolutely nothing to anyone else but mean everything to us. I want to write about that love. I really do. But it’s difficult, perhaps because I’m still living it. It’s easier to look back and edit a song on a chapter of your life and understand what it meant than to capture the meaning of a story that’s still unfolding. That alive in every sense of the word. I hope to write that song someday. In every way, it’s a much bigger story to tell. For now, I decided to share “Let Me Count the Ways” because I believe the feeling it captures is universal. Most people who have fallen in love know what it’s like to create a little world that only two people understand. And there’s something beautiful about that, regardless of when or where it happened.