A sad song that still has a heartbeat.
Some people leave and take everything with them. Some leave one small mark behind, and it stays.
“Alkaline Tattoo” is about that mark. Not a photograph, not a letter, just the place under the skin where somebody used to be. They said it would fade in a year. It’s been twenty-two.
It’s a sad song, but it isn’t a slow one. It keeps a pulse, because the heart it’s written on is still beating.
You left your name beneath my skin
An etched in pain I can't erase
I wear the room we lived in
In every breath I fail to place
No photograph, no final note
Just one small mark is all you wrote
I held a door you wouldn't close
And let the silence settle in, I suppose
The Tattoo left on my heart
Ink that the years can't pull apart
I loved alone, I never knew
Now every pulse comes back to you
Alkaline Tattoo, etched upon my heart
The deepest wound, the truest scar
(instrumental)
Under my skin in a chemical blue
Said it'd fade in a year, well it's been twenty-two
Ink don't wash, it just eats its way in
A little bit of burn up under my skin
I gave you all the words I ever had
You gave me none that were not sad
Some kinds of hurt don't turn to anger
All your promises turned to paper
Alkaline Tattoo left on my heart
Ink that the years can't pull apart
I loved alone, I never knew
Now every pulse comes back to you
Alkaline Tattoo, etched upon my heart
The deepest wound, the truest scar
Who played on this recording of Alkaline Tattoo.
Wrote it and sings it straight, no polish.
The dry slide that gives the song its desert heat.
Holds the bottom down, steady as a pulse.
Keeps the heartbeat moving under everything.
The lonesome answer between the lines.
Put it all together at Murrells Inlet Studios.