Some relationships last a lifetime. They grow, evolve, and endure the trials of time. Others, though, don’t. Some unravel slowly, in ways that feel inevitable, visible to everyone long before the final goodbye. Others burn bright, quick and fierce, only to fizzle out just as fast. And then there are the ones that seem steady, solid – until suddenly, they aren’t. The kind of unravelling no one saw coming.
I wrote This Time Last Week about that last kind of heartbreak. A friend told me that she and her husband were separating after more than a decade of marriage, and it hit me harder than I expected. I’m used to turning to music when the weight of life feels too heavy, so I picked up my guitar, prayed for my friends, and began to write. The bridge of the song draws on words from 1 Corinthians 13 – the part where Paul talks about love never giving up. It’s a reminder of the persistence of love, even when our own hearts falter. I wish I could tell you they reconciled, that their story had a redemptive arc. But sometimes life doesn’t work out the way we hope, and that’s its own kind of grief.
For this song, I leaned into an unusual rhythm, writing most of it in 7/8—seven beats to the bar. The choice wasn’t arbitrary. There’s something in that irregular pulse that echoes the lyrics’ opening line, “Seven days can come and go,” and gives a sense of instability, a slight nudge into the unfamiliar. Yet the groove is still there, grounding us in something that feels organic.
I usually find myself weaving harmonic shifts into the bridge to carry the lyrics’ movement, but here, instead of a change in melody, I used a shift in time signature to mirror the shifting tone of the lyrics. As the song’s focus pivots, so does the rhythm, settling into 4/4.
This playful experimentation with rhythm isn’t new for me. I often like to add half bars or unexpected beats here and there, keeping things a little unpredictable. The verses in Let Me Introduce You (Daughter of the King), for instance, dance in 5/8, and the introduction of Belong to You (Hardly A Day) weaves between 6/8 and 5/8, creating a sense of movement even before the lyrics come in.
Some of this exploration was inspired by Sting, whose Ten Summoner’s Tales was a revelation to me. I still remember the moment I picked up the cassette in a Cardiff WHSmith back in the summer of ’93, spending the holiday money my grandmother had given me. Sting’s rhythmic inventiveness in songs like Saint Augustine in Hell (7/8) and Seven Days (5/4) offered a sense of freedom – to let the rhythm carry the story forward in unexpected ways, to let the beat itself say something.
If you’re particularly interested in songs with unusual time signatures, I’ve made a Spotify playlist – click here to have a listen.
This Time Last Week
Seven days can come and go
Flying past or moving slowly
I know everything can change
In just seven fleeting days
This time last week
Everything was sweet
And I thought we would last forever
Somehow in between
A chasm opened up
Swallowing the love
But it’s not too late for us
Words can hurt I know they maim
Like arrows tipped with poisoned rage
In the moment I believe
We both said things we didn’t mean
Love never falters, won’t give up
Always looking for the best
Ever hoping ’til the end
If I could turn back the clock
Then I would go back to this time last week
© Olwen Ringrose 2024