Release date: 14 March 2025
Before my wrist injuries stopped me from playing music, I used to love playing the guitar and the piano, and I loved nothing more than creating songs. I was always writing lyrics and then creating music to go with them. Sometimes the other way around, but always the same outcome, I was creating songs.
I wrote You Are Beautiful in the early 2010s, and it is a song especially close to my heart. I was bullied at school, something I put down to the fact that I started school too soon. I was a slow developer who was born in May, which is a very bad combination.
Anyone who knows anything about the development of children will know that there is a reason September-born children have such an advantage across the board. They are older and so more developed. As such, if you put a slow-developing May-born child with even a normally developing September-born child, you’re talking over a year difference in development rate.
That is massive when it comes to life prospects, non-September to November born children at a massive disadvantage, something which the book Outliers explains brilliantly for anybody interested.
This is why I’m a big advocate not only for boys to start school a year later than girls, as boys develop more slowly than girls, but for there to be a limit on age differences in classes to 3 months. This would create a much more even playing ground at schools, and it would lower the risk of a slow developer finding themselves with a massive gap between the others in class.
After all, you would never put a young child in a classroom with older children, because everybody knows that young child would get bullied and would struggle. Yet we are doing this constantly due to the poor system we have in place that doesn’t take into account differing development rates in children.
I’m diverting off topic of course here. With that all said, back to my debut single, You Are Beautiful. This is a song that I wrote to my younger self, and to anybody who was bullied at school, or is being bullied right now. It is a reminder that no matter what they say, no matter what they do, You Are Beautiful, you just have to look in the mirror and set yourself free.
I created it using Suno AI. I input me playing the guitar for some inspiration, input the lyrics, gave it some prompts, and then started playing about. This obviously means that the vocals are AI, as is the music, but the general rhythm and the lyrics are all mine, and the rhythm is based on my original guitar riff. So you could say this is a cover song of my original version of the song. In fact, that’s exactly what it is.
I hope you enjoy it, and if you are suffering right now, I hope it helps ease the pain a little. Writing it helped ease my pain a little.
Lyrics:
As you walk along the street
You feel their eyes on you
You’re wondering what it is
That they’re gonna do
You hear what they’re saying
You’re wondering if they’re right
They start to make you wonder
If life’s even worth the fight
But you are, beautiful
Yes you are, beautiful
They say that you’re different
They say that you’re not right
They knock you down when you’re up
Then they kick you when you’re down
They say that you’re a clown now
Then they stand and laugh at you
They even make you wonder
If what they say might just be true
But you are, what you are
You must be, what you must be
Just look in the mirror
And let yourself be free
Cus you are beautiful
Yes you are
Beautiful
Just look in the mirror
And let yourself be free
Cus you are beautiful
Yes you are
Beautiful
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