I’ve been a fan of Nerina Pallot for a really long time. I feel fortunate to seen her play during my time in London. I have always loved her songwriting. “Master Builder” is taken from 2022’s I Don’t Know What I’m Doing, which I love as an album title, because I feel in my 40’s I have learned exactly how much I don’t know, despite always believing the opposite would happen.
I realise that most people probably have not heard of Nerina Pallot. She’s the kind of songwriter that just chips away at things, working on songs and releasing albums, writing for other people. She isn’t splashed all over Tiktok or commercial radio, chasing fads. Her music is very listenable, varied enough to keep your interest and she is a multi-instrumentalist – so she will only record her music with musos better than herself to get the best result.
“Master Builder” is a song of our times. It’s about realising that the world is broken, the clowns are in power and we’ve all had enough. It acknowledges we are largely powerless to fix it.
There’s so much to love about this song, it has that timeless feeling of a 60s tune as it was written with a Stevie Wonder vibe. The piano starts off the song before the drums gently kick in.
The first verse begins to outline the situation as if addressing the Master Builder, suggesting something is wrong and we might need rebooting or our wiring is wrong. I like this comparison of humanity to a computer that just needs a Ctrl + Alt + Delete to get us on the right path.
We move into the chorus which encapsulates the frustration of being in this situation of not knowing what will happen in the future and being ruled by a bunch of muppets:
Well, I don’t know where we’re going
But I know where I have been
And I know what I have seen
So I’m sackin’ off this scene, yeah
They don’t know what they’re doin’
But the stupid people rule
All the jokers and the fools
Tryin’ to tell us what to do
Nerina Pallot – Master Builder
After another verse and chorus, we come to a bridge with the line ‘In the kingdom of the blind they say the one eyed man is king’, which I just love as it flows with the analogy of ‘the blind leading the blind’, however the ones leading us now are short-sighted and visually impaired. A great synth organ part comes in here, along with some cracking backing vocals that sing us out.
If you’ve not spent much time listening to Nerina Pallot, I recommend getting starting with 2017’s Stay Lucky. There’s some really great moments on there. Then give I Don’t Know What I’m Doing a go. I hope she’ll work her way into your heart as much as she has mine.