Justin Davies

About the Artist

‘The Library’ is a warm country-blues song about memory, missed chances and the quiet intimacy of a connection that never quite had its time. Written from a prompt about reading, it draws on school library notes, nervous glances and the thought of crossing paths again years later. ‘The Library’ was written by the Donnybrook-raised Fremantle-based artist as part of a session with the renowned I Heart Songwriting Club. The popular online artistic community attracts songwriters from all over the world, both celebrated and emerging. A topic is given, and within an hour a song is written. “The topic in this particular case was reading,” Davies recalls. “An image came to my mind of a place in Albany that I'd been to when I was first married. This beautiful old hotel - which has since been knocked down - had a little reading room with high ceilings, a beautiful fireplace and these lovely leather chairs. “For whatever reason, I was also thinking about a girl I knew when I was in high school. We used to chat in the library during lunchtime, flirt and swap notes. ‘Terrified’, I think, is how I'd probably describe the way I was feeling at the time. “So it was writing about that interesting sort of intimacy, and then thinking ‘what would happen if you bumped into each other in some way, shape or form 20 to 30 years later?’ It's just tapping into that idea of a sliding door moment.”