Sometimes She Smiles

Sometimes She Smiles is a song by The Midnight. It is the fifth track from the compilation album Vehlinggo Presents: 5 Years.

Track info

The song was written by Tyler Lyle and produced by Tim McEwan. It has a running time of two minutes and thirty-nine seconds and is in the key of C major.

Aaron Vehling created the website Vehlinggo in 2014 originally to dive into the world of film and television music. Over the years, Vehling started drifting into coverage about various genres of electronic music, including house, disco, and synthwave. He has interviewed and published content about many popular artists in the synthwave genre, including The Midnight. In 2019, Vehling celebrated the site's fifth anniversary by curating unreleased songs from various artists he has covered over the years into a compilation. The compilation, titled Vehlinggo Presents: 5 Years, was released on November 1, 2019.

The Midnight contributed Sometimes She Smiles, a song originally by Tyler Lyle from the deluxe edition of his album The Native Genius of Desert Plants. According to Lyle, the version produced by Tim McEwan that was included on the compilation uses a loop that was created around the time of the production of Days of Thunder, The Midnight's first EP. In the digital liner notes for the compilation, Lyle shared the inspiration and meaning of the song: <blockquote>

I was living in Santa Monica, four blocks from the ocean. I’d been working a lot, but there wasn’t much happening with music. I left my fiancée in the apartment and took a walk to reflect on my momentary unhappiness. On a park bench at Ashland and Barnard Way, I wrote the lyrics — not intending it to be a song — to ‘Sometimes She Smiles.’ I think it was an unconscious drive to recalibrate the ‘Doing/Knowing’ part of me (that always seems to lead) with the ‘Being/Feeling’ part of myself (that I always seem to be lacking). Alternatively, it could just be a fictional conversation between me and my wife about my stubbornness. Either way, the bones that are breaking in his head are always mine, and the more evolved response (which is usually my wife’s) is just to smile — knowingly.

Lyrics

He spoke of the truth and how it might save her
And she spoke of the trees in Vermont in the winter
He said we must strive for faith through devotion
While she dreams of the smell of the Indian Ocean
He spoke in philosophical structure
She spoke of a vineyard, she spoke of her lover
When he does not understand
You can hear bones breaking in his head
When she does not understand
Sometimes she smiles
When he does not understand
You can hear bones breaking in his head
When she does not understand
Sometimes she smiles
He said reason is what separates man from the beasts
And she kissed him and put him at ease

Lyrics source