In honour of Tom Robinson’s birthday I thought I’d pick out my favourite track of his to review. I first heard this track when I saw him perform live at Blackheath Halls in January 2024, he used it to close out his set that night, and it was just one of those songs that stays with you in so many different ways.
What we have here is a song that’s essentially a love song to his family, especially his two children.
The first line is evidence of this:
“Felt like I’d known you for all of my life,
Long before you both arrived.”
It then moves through time talking about growing up, the medium of seeing life through polaroids, and using the imagery of how home videos can’t really capture the moment so you have to enjoy the moment as it is.
Musically, it starts off with an acoustic guitar, joined by a music box giving it the feeling of a lullaby, Tom’s gruff deep voice is done away with here and in its place it’s his gentler side, and you can’t help but smile.
Tom’s voice is so vulnerable on this, and that’s what makes you see the softer side of him – after all this is a man who has turned his voice to rock with “2468 Motorway”, Vaudeville with “Martin” and somewhere in the mists of time recorded folk songs, so it doesn’t surprise me at all. I saw him perform this song with his hands in his pockets at the front of the stage, and it was a sweet moment as you could hear a pin drop. I will admit to having a little tear in my ear hearing this song, and rightly so, it’s such a moving piece of music.
There are so many things I can say about this song, but all I can do is to entice you to go and listen to it, something that Tom did in his mission of establishing Fresh On The Net and making the BBC Introducing Mixtape an important fixture for grassroots artists in the UK. If I’ve managed to do that here then I’ve gone a little further in repaying the debt that we owe Tom.
Happy birthday you legend.
God bless you.
