3:17 A.M. – Song Description
“We’re all just fellow travellers, watching time go by.” The comfort in this song, such as it is, doesn’t come from company finally arriving to relieve someone’s loneliness. It comes from the realisation that the company was there the entire time, unseen, at exactly the same unglamorous hour that had felt most isolating — every other person also awake, also certain, in that particular moment, that they alone were up at that hour with nowhere better to be. Loneliness at three in the morning, I’ve come to think, is often less a fact about the world than a failure of information available to the person experiencing it. I wrote this one after a long stretch of my own broken sleep, wondering how many other people were staring at their own version of the same ceiling at the exact same moment, entirely unaware of each other, and I liked the idea of a song that could quietly connect all of them without any of them ever actually meeting.
3:17 A.M.
Verse 1
The wind is moving softly
Past the houses down the lane
A single lamp is glowing
Through a bedroom windowpane
The television’s silent
The kettle’s long gone cold
And somewhere in the darkness
A thousand stories unfold
Verse 2
A mother counts her worries
A father counts the bills
An old man holds a photograph
And sits completely still
A young girl dreams of somewhere
She’s never seen before
A lonely soul asks heaven
What tomorrow has in store
Chorus
While the world is sleeping
And the midnight shadows fall
Millions sit in silence
Thinking things they’ll never tell at all
Some are making plans
Some are saying prayers
Some are holding memories
To help them through the years
At three seventeen a.m.
The stars shine overhead
A million different journeys
Are taking place inside our heads
Verse 3
A businessman in London
Stares across the city lights
Wondering if the road he chose
Was worth the years and fights
A soldier far from home tonight
Reads letters once again
A widow holds a wedding ring
And whispers her husband’s name
Verse 4
A teenager is dreaming
Of a life beyond this town
A farmer checks the weather
Praying rain will soon come down
A nurse has just come off her shift
Too tired to even speak
And wonders if the lives she touched
Will make it through the week
Bridge
Behind a million windows
A million stories start
Different roads and different lives
The same human heart
Different voices
Different prayers
Different hopes beneath the stars
Different stories
Every night
The same human heart
Final Chorus
While the world is sleeping
And the moon hangs silver-white
Millions of unseen battles
Are being fought tonight
Some will find an answer
Some will simply wait
Some will wake tomorrow
And some will meet their fate
At three seventeen a.m.
Beneath the same dark sky
We’re all just fellow travellers
Watching time go by
Outro
Behind a million windows
A million stories start
Different stories
Same human heart
Lyrics Michael Forty
Voice Michael Forty