Behind The Tracks: Midland Railway - A Song for Hannah Beth (Single) (2025)

I remember thinking about how a lot of the very early songs I had written seemed quite bitter and kind of mean. Although turning anger and resentment into music is quite an effective way of processing such emotions, I had wanted to try to make music out of other feelings, to better represent the overall human experience.

I decided to try to write something based on that sense of hope that a new relationship can bring, but at the time, my recent relationships had been completely disastrous, and as I was writing the lyrics, it felt like I was trying to persuade myself to overlook all the reasons to question how authentic the supposedly wonderful new relationship was. I ended up with a song that I think gives people things to think about and can be interpreted in multiple ways, and maybe it’s a better song because of that.

Most songwriters seem to write the music first, then the lyrics, but I tend to do those the other way round. I usually at least know what I generally want the song to say before I start working on the music. I liked the melody I was able to come up with for this one, but when it came to the arrangement, I didn’t want anything to smother the lyrics or the vocal melody, so I thought heavy distortion would not have worked. The result is that it probably sounds the least punk-rock of all our most popular songs, but I think it works best this way, and I love the energy the song has despite the absence of heavy guitars.

When we first started performing it, it did not seem to particularly stand out to people like some of our other songs have done, and at time,s this had me questioning whether this song I had written was actually any good. However, it grew on people a lot. Now, most people who like Midland Railway seem to pick this out as their favourite of all our songs (even though She Loves Ted Bundy is the one that first gets people’s attention). It seems that A Song for Hannah-Beth grows on you, and then keeps on growing on you, which is a great quality for any song to have.

When it came to recording our album, it was the second song we recorded (after The Pokemon Adventure). I remember being pleasantly surprised that my bandmates rated it as such a high priority to record. Production was by Neil Treppas, and after we had made a bunch of rather amateurish cockups recording The Pokémon Adventure, we had learned from our errors and were able to make life a lot easier for Neil this time around. The fact that I had not tried to cram too many words in made recording the vocals way easier. Neil is fantastic at bringing through pop songs in a way where they sound bright and melodic, and his vocal production is the best around. And I think this is particularly evident on this song.