The record’s musical and emotional centerpiece, though, is She Comes, a gorgeous blend of folk and jazz in which Damian sings of a spirit inhabiting the living world – she comes as a blackbird, she comes as a fox, she sits at the window, she sings from a rock – over washes of rolling, Nick Drake-style piano.
We launched Damian Lewis’s Song of the Week series last week with “Zaragoza,” and the engagement on the post confirms that fans are enjoying this concept. Thank you! If you If you missed the first post, here is the story behind Zaragoza. Today, in our second post, we highlight “She Comes,” the first song Damian wrote for his debut album, Mission Creep. This post is not only about “She Comes” but also about how Damian began his journey as a songwriter.
ENJOY!
A few days after releasing his debut album Mission Creep, Damian hosted a special mini gig at Rough Trade East in London, which was preceded by a chat with his musical collaborator, Giacomo Smith, and followed by a record signing.
During the pre-gig conversation, Damian explained that his collaboration with Giacomo Smith began when the two of them started selecting cover songs and playing ’30s-’ ’40s swing tunes together, with the idea of reinventing these classics in a more swing/jazz style.
Giacomo remembered that their first meeting was a one hour phone call. They got on well, and decided to try stuff together. They started with some old songs such as Dr. John’s “Such A Night” (now a bonus track on Mission Creep) and some music that Giacomo remembered had “face” in the title to which Damian said it would eventually come to him. And as Giacomo told us about their “30 song” plan where they put 30 songs together and chose a few from those, and then came up with other 30 songs and chose a few from those, and repeated… the song with “face” in the title came to Damian:
“I’ve accustomed to your face.”
Oh My God. This is a very well-known song from My Fair Lady. And Lady Trader and I would LOVE to see Damian as Prof. Higgins on stage. And you know, with the on-going musical career, a musical may be the logical next step for him, no?
Then Giacomo asked Damian about how song-writing came about and we learnt that it was Giacomo that really prompted Damian to start writing songs. Damian told us that he wrote songs when he was younger without any confidence. He said they were horrible songs and he threw them away. But when he started again, it felt much more natural, and much more enjoyable. But it also shifted their direction musically. Damian wrote his songs on piano and on his acoustic guitar thanks to his background in busking and the songs turned out to be ‘rootsy, story-telling, folky, bluesy” p different from what they started with in mind, but they like where they have ended up. And as he started writing his own songs, the first song Damian wrote was “She Comes.”
Here is a snippet of Damian singing “She Comes” at the mini gig at Rough Trade East in London.
Damian shared with Cambridge Independent in 2024:
“Many people will know that I lost my wife about three years ago. This album was written in that time. So inevitably, there’s a reflection of that time in the songs. One or two of the songs are, undeniably, just directly about Helen.
The very first song I wrote was She Comes. That’s sort of the anthem of the album. That was the one that came out and just sort of flowed.”
And he gave a more detailed account of how he sat down to write his own songs after Helen passed on Katie Brewers’ Bandwith Conversations Podcast:
“Everyone’s probably sat down tried to write a song. I think I tried to write songs in my 20s, and just thought those are terrible. And I must never play those to anyone. So, and then life… you know I was married to Helen. And Helen and I were very much, I suppose, an acting couple. We didn’t try to be that. We just were… And we loved acting, and Helen loved acting and the theatre world as do I. And I think I went further and further away from it. Well, I always had guitars in the house, picked them up and played when people don’t want you to… ‘ Oh My God he picked up his guitar again…’
…but all the busking was gone, and that was in the past… and then I think the truth of it is… it was that… Sitting around during Covid… thinking… well, so many things we can do when we come out of this… just rethink things a bit, we now have a chance to sit down and reflect… That’s what happened… And then, I mean, really, just bluntly and sort of nakedly, Helen died… Helen died which she was going to do because she wasn’t well for a long time… And then I just started writing songs… They just poured out of me at that point. It seemed, suddenly, like the most natural thing in the world to do, to be honest. Unquestionably, the album is connected to Helen in that time that will be self-evident. And I feel now totally comfortable… the other people will say if they are any good or not… but I feel totally comfortable doing it and confident doing it… that I never had before.”
As Damian repeatedly said Mission Creep is not a grief album. Yet, thanks to the songs being based on Damian’s life experiences and the particular time he wrote them, several songs on the album are about Helen. And from the Elvis-y “Little One” to the beautiful ballad “Wanna Grow Old in Paris” I love them all. But “She Comes” is the one that has stood out for me since I heard it at Damian’s first ever gig at Omeara London. And the music critic of The Times who was also at Omeara agrees with me.
“…he closed on a high with a superb folk-rock track that began as a gently tumbling waltz before building to a crashing, emotionally raw blast. This was the best song of the night, sounding like a lost Jeff Buckley classic in places.”
And here is Damian on the process of writing the first song for his debut album:
“’She Comes’ is the first song I wrote for my debut album, so that makes it…my first song (that I’ve shared with the world, at any rate…). It’s about ghosts, and one ghost in particular. The album has hybrid sounds all through it but this song leans heavily on a folk set up before crescendo-ing with a jazz feel brought by my brilliant band.”
I am a huge jazz fan. So I am in love with the jazz feel in She Comes that Damian talks about. But more than anything I am in awe of the amazing poet that Damian is. The lyrics are so personal, so poignant, so powerful. It gives me chills.
She’s the breezeShe’s the sunShe’s the reason it was funThe laughing rainShe’s the wind and the stormWhat I sheltered fromShe’s my joy she’s my painAnd she rained on me
I do not think longing for a loved one who passed could be told more beautifully or more honestly.
She’s the bag on the floor
She’s the hat on a hook
She’s never really bad
But she isn’t always good
And her lip curls and unfurls
Like the leaves in a book
She’s a no she’s a yes
She’s anybody’s guess
She’s the click of a heel
An abandoned dress
She drove me insane
But she’s lodged in my brain I confess
Damian mentioned that writing songs came to him naturally at some point, in particular after Helen died, and I completely understand why. There are feelings and thoughts we can’t always share in conversation, which is why keeping a diary can be so helpful. Music serves as another remarkable outlet—a way to communicate raw, intimate, and profound emotions. I believe Damian achieves this perfectly in “She Comes.” Hats off to him.
Please see below the fantastic She Comes music video shot at Master Shipwright’s Palace in Deptford, London, and directed by Nick Murphy who also directed Damian in the fantastic A Spy Among Friends.
Damian reflected on the process of making the music video in an interview with Stereo Board:
“We hoped to convey the feeling of an abandoned house, of the ghost of the woman that once lived there and a group of friends gathering to celebrate her.”
One thought on “Damian Lewis’ Song of the Week: She Comes”