Hi, kerkenat.

I hope you don't mind some critical feedback on your song. You've got a very compelling story here, and you've done some interesting things with the production.

And you've done a fantastic job distilling the story down to the essentials. But it feels like you've missed an opportunity to get to the emotional core of the story in the chorus.

Although the soldiers are important (in that they're the catalyst of action), I suggest that they aren't really the emotional heart of the song.

As a listener, I don't care about the soldiers so much as I care about your wife and her story. It seems to me that it's a about leaving things behind: her mother, her childhood, her village, those who died while fleeing. These are laid out in the verses, and turned around at the end where she reunites with her sister, and finally leaves the camp for a new home.

So here's my suggestion: why not make that the chorus of the song? That is, having to leave things behind, and how that made her feel? And then (in the final chorus) leaving the camp behind could add a final, new meaning.

It's also a bit dissonant hearing such a "happy" tune with such a heavy story. There are other songs that work like that, but it can be quite a trick to pull off properly.

Just my two cents...

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?