tom eaton - 'instead i said goodbye'

In her song “Goodbye,” Jane Siberry sings “I went to say ‘I love you,’ but instead I said ‘goodbye.” It’s a line that has haunted Tom for years. “So many times we ignore the truth that we know, choosing the easy answer, or the one that keeps things steady and seemingly safe,” he said. Even after realizing he was neither safe nor steady where he was, even when every cell of his body knew those truths, Tom remembers hanging on. This song is about the moment he realized the only thing left to do was to go.

The piano part for this piece appeared to Tom almost fully formed late one night at Will Ackerman’s studio in Vermont in June of 2018, and the song ended up setting the mood and pace for the album. In hindsight he realized it was offering him some advice…but it took him some time to figure that out.