Nick Harris

I sang this song with some friends at karaoke a couple weeks ago, and realized after getting into it that it's super repetitive. Both the melody and the lyric (specifically "with arms wide open") are repeated over and over and over. It got stuck in my head, and later I started strumming it on guitar, and realized there's a really pretty song buried down under all the late nineties nu-metal excess. So I decided to record a version of my own to cure the earworm.

I stripped it down to the essentials, changed a couple words here and there, added some variation to the melody, and replaced the guitar solo with slow, deep breathing through a harmonica. My friend Grace happened to be passing through Chicago at the time, so I asked her to sing some harmonies on it. I think what we ended up with is almost a totally new song, yet still true to the source material. And I just think it's cool that songs can shape-shift like that.

Here's Grace and I's version: https://soundcloud.com/my-friend-nick/with-arms-wide-open-creed-cover-feat-grace-kuhl

... Greeting the 2025 with arms wide open.