Through

Through was written in a hotel room in London, Canada — the other London, four thousand miles from the one he lives in. It is the most direct thing on Father, and everything that matters in it happens between two stanzas of the same verse.

The first is addressed to a man. Daddy, Daddy, where are you — I need your wisdom, for a billion things — but you weren’t there, you were not sure. It is not a prayer. It is a question put to a father who was present and unreliable, which is exactly how Yemi later described his own: still there, and no longer there for him.

The stanza gets no answer. The next one begins: Defender of the fatherless, came to my rescue, Father me with a smile.

That is Psalm 68:5, and it is the verse at the top of this site’s About page. The substitution the entire catalogue argues for — finding God as Father rather than as an authority or a miracle worker — is not explained here, or introduced, or softened. It simply happens in the gap between two stanzas, with the question left hanging and a different father answering it.

He wrote it as a verb again, too. Father me with a smile, the same construction as Great Titles four tracks earlier: I love the way you Father me. In this catalogue fathering is something done, not something a person is.

The third verse turns outward, and it is the reason the song runs past six minutes. Look around you, children are hungry, they have no papa, have no mama to call. Show them love. Give them hope. Having received the substitution, the song immediately makes it an obligation — and then addresses those children directly: you have a Father, he knows your name, he’d never leave, never forsake you.

Wound, rescue, obligation, in that order, over six minutes. It is the clearest statement of what the fatherless generation phrase actually means to him, and it was on the debut album all along.