2025 Competition Entry:

It’s Never Too Late by Marvin Conan

Genre

Folk

Artist

Website

Co-writer(s)

no

Performer(s)

Reed Waddle – Vocalist
Matt Anthony – Producer

Description

25 years ago when I was young (55 years old) I did some bicycle touring in upstate New York. There’s a Women’s Museum in the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, and in it a saw a poster with the George Eliot quote “It’s never too late to be what you might have been” and immediately thought that was a great idea for a song. But I was unable to figure out how to approach it until a few years ago, and this song is the result.

Bio

A Brooklynite by birth, I’ve been involved with music my entire life. I began taking piano lessons when I was 5 years old and as a 9 year old, had a scholarship to study classical piano at the prestigious Chatham Square Music School. As a teenager, I listened to all kinds of music – jazz, folk, classical, top 40, American songbook etc. I taught myself folk guitar, took flute lessons and played in my high school and college orchestras. I occasionally wrote a song, and a few of my songs came to the attention of the legendary music publisher Al Gallico, who, after after listening to them, asked me to come work for him. At the time, music was a fun avocation, and I had no thoughts about being a professional songwriter. Throughout my life I would occasionally write songs, but it was only as I neared retirement from federal service that I began to write more regularly and take my writing more seriously. I had a few country songs released on Pharaoh International Records that got a fair amount of airplay in Europe. A song called “Too Soon”, written in remembrance of a loved one who died in the terrorist Lockerbie plane crash over Scotland was a finalist in the UK Songwriting Contest, and a few years later a song I co-wrote won the Olympic Theme category in the same contest. Several of my songs have been performed in satb choir arrangements. Many of my recent songs have to do with social issues and aging.

Lyrics

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE

A ship without a rudder at the mercy of the tides
A colorful whimsical wayward butterfly
Bacchanalian revelry – sweet sweet red wine
Sometimes I’d catch a shooting star as she went flyin’ by

Just like Mr. Dylan said – no direction home
Never thought about tomorrow – where I was goin’
No dreams no destination – I only had today
Till the mirror told me my hair was turnin’ grey

It hit me like a thunderbolt
I never thought that I’d get old
I went into my cave and locked the door
I sank into a deep dark sea
An endless maze – life’s debris
Came out a different man than I was before

It’s never too late – never too late – to be what you might have been
It’s never too late -never too late – too late to spread your wings
It’s never too late – to catch the wind – soar and glide – through the sky
It’s never too late – to be what you might have been

All those bacchanalian years were not a waste of time
I learned all there was to know about desire
I saw shadows ice and fire in all humankind
An odyssey that never ends – and now I’m free to rise

It’s never too late – never too late – to be what you might have been
It’s never too late -never too late – too late to spread your wings
It’s never too late – to catch the wind – soar and glide – through the sky
It’s never too late – to be what you might have been

© Marvin Conan

Leave a comment

  1. Unfortunately, we don’t all have Spotify accounts)… 😢. (I realize I *could* get one, but on principle, for multiple reasons, I’m anti-Spotify.) Oh well, at least they give us a 30-second preview!