PENDULUM — The Story Behind the Song

Some songs arrive like a download from the universe, a sudden burst of information.
Pendulum wasn’t one of those.

This one dripped in slowly, like a memory you’ve tried to avoid finally tapping you on the shoulder.
I wasn’t trying to write about death.
I wasn’t trying to write about regret, or forgiveness, or the moment a life reaches its final breath.
But that’s what came through.

I’ve always felt less like a “writer” and more like a receiver, like the songs choose me rather than the other way around.
Pendulum felt exactly like that: a feeling of something incoming… then the sense that I needed to pay attention… then a quiet voice saying:

Look. Don’t look away this time.

A few years ago, during a difficult stretch of life, I did more soul-searching than I ever expected. I went back through childhood memories, questioned old beliefs, tried to understand fears and patterns I had carried for decades.
Somewhere in all of that, something shifted.
I still don’t know if “spiritual awakening” is the right term, but it changed how I look at life, and how I look at death.

I stopped trying to outrun mortality.
I stopped pretending I had infinite time.
And strangely, instead of feeling darker, life felt softer.

Pendulum feels like a song told from the last moments of a life, that quiet space where everything slows down, where what mattered and what didn’t becomes painfully clear.
A place where there’s no more time to apologise, no more time to fix what you broke, no more chances to say I love you again.

It’s not hopelessness.
It’s clarity.

That moment when you finally see the full weight of your life, what you offered to the world, the good and the bad.
And in that clarity, there is forgiveness.
For others.
And for yourself.

I wasn’t thinking about my own death when I wrote Pendulum.
But I was thinking about the part of life we tend to avoid until it’s too late.
And I realised something:

The closer we look at our own fragility, the more gently we start living.

Pendulum is a reminder of that.
Of impermanence.
Of accountability.
Of the strange beauty in letting go.

It’s a song for anyone who has ever sat alone with their regrets, forgiven someone who couldn’t love them properly, or faced the truth that none of us are here forever.

And somehow, that makes life feel more precious.

—J.P.