It is great song craft, but, of course, much more. Here he wraps up the song with a complex but beautiful, perfectly rhymed metaphor. In “Hello In There” we see into the apartment in the city before he shows us those old trees growing taller and rivers growing wilder. Yet never did he suggest avoiding the poetry all together, but it’s poetry of real life always, never disconnected from the world we knew. But if you start with abstractions, they will be lost. The lyric exemplifies the songwriting wisdom he shared in his interview with this magazine: if you start a song with pictures, and set the scene physically, the listener will be open to poetic, complex language. “Sometimes a little tenderness was the best that I could do.” What remains unspoken, and why, comes across. He ends the final verse with an admission that is pure Prine, giving just enough so that we fill in the whole picture ourselves. He remembers all those nights playing on an out-of-tune guitar.
Though the title boasts that he remembers everything, in the same song he admits that there are some memories that he actively avoids: “Careful not to let the past go sneaking up on me.” He remembers no one else’s faults or weakness, only his own.
Yet it’s also pure Prine in that he brings the full dimensional span of being human to this brief song. They aren’t memories of regret they are memories of the cherished, simple things – every blade of grass – and the precious moments, such as when he first met his true love, and she smiled back at his smile. They are the memories of a gentle songwriter with a big heart, one who never lost his childlike wonder and sense of the world’s rightness. Nor are they memories of the darker passages of life, of the wreckage left in the wake. These are not random memories or irrelevant ones.
It’s an admission of truth – that he was one of those rare humans who collected always the souvenirs of each passing day, never abandoning the memories many don’t keep.īut being Prine, there’s more to it. In under three minutes and no words wasted, he brings it all. Produced by Dave Cobb, it was recorded in John’s living room, just the man and that great two-finger finger-picking style he’s used through the decades. It got shared with the world during the live-streamed tribute to John called “Picture Show: A Tribute to John Prine” on June 11, 2020.
It’s a song he wrote with his pal Pat McLaughlin called “I Remember Everything.” The Prine Family and their label, Oh Boy Records, has released what was John Prine’s final recording. John Prine, “I Remember Everything,” his final recording.