Song title: Modern Day Stress
Music by: Ben Robertson
Lyrics by: Ben Robertson
Artist: Ben Robertson
My name is Ben Robertson and despite growing up in the United Kingdom I moved to Stockholm, Sweden in 2011. My first Eurovision event in person was the 2010 United Kingdom National Final (first but not the best!) and I’ve been to more than 20 National Finals since I have worked out, alongside going to Eurovision itself.
I previously took part in HCSC in 2018 with ‘Schrödinger’s Life’ and last year was a part of the ESC Insight guest jury for HCSC 2021.
This year I submit the song ‘Modern Day Stress’. I wrote the song last year at a time when life became unbearably busy and I was struggling to be the person or the father that I wanted to be. Even though we had a piano at home I barely got chance to play on it, for example. I had this idea to write a song about what I was going through and I forced myself to take a day I didn’t really have to sit at the piano and make the magic happen, and this is the end result. I find writing songs to be incredibly introspective, almost like having a diary, and I’m happy to say that this song helped me work things out and I’m in a much better place today than I was then.
The recording was completed at a recording studio in Shrewsbury, England, last year. I had a couple of songs I wanted to record the morning we booked the studio and we tried a few different ideas to lift the track. Eventually though we settled on a three-minute one-take version with just me and the piano, which gives the biggest focus to the lyrics.
Modern Day Stress
Why am I awake at 4 a.m?
I barely even got the bed sheets warm
My mind is racing and I can’t switch off
I know all the work it is piling up
I tried to write a list, but it’s too much
I have to fake I’m in control
Is it me, is it life that is going insane?
Cannot cure what it is driving me ‘round the bend.
Trying to keep up with the Jones’
In a world that’s so exhausting
And yes, yes I know picture perfect I know that’s a lie
But it won’t stop the feeling that my life’s awry
From the stress more than 9-to-5-ing
Modern day stress – I’m just surviving
Ticking over a day at a time
Rely on vices to make me feel fine
But what good’s that drug fuelled stimulation
When it became my medication
And one day all its satisfaction it did stop
Is it me, is it life that is going insane?
Cannot cure what it is driving me ‘round the bend
When the pace of life it’s rushing
Just this world as a 30-something
You don’t have the time for the chores and no time for the joy
Even writing this song was a guilty decoy
From the stress more than 9-to-5-ing
Modern day stress – and I’m just surviving
The way, you looked, you looked in my eyes
So forlorn, and lost, oh you were surprised
That I’m half the man you married
A tenth of the dad that I wanted to be
And please I don’t mean this, oh don’t be alarmed
But I thought some things, you can’t understand
How I stare out the window from my desk at work
I see the five-floor drop escaping the hurt
How did it get to this? A life without rest
That’s going to get cut short from the pain in my chest
Of the stress more than 9-to-5-ing
Modern day stress – and I’m just surviving