Hearing Kristina Train for the first time is nothing less than a revelation… Read Full Bio ↴Hearing Kristina Train for the first time is nothing less than a revelation: her sunny, easygoing demeanor and youthful good looks belie the heart-wrenching power of her voice. Train’s Blue Note debut, Spilt Milk, is urbane and soulful, lush in its arrangements but intimate in its emotions, built on a foundation of classic and deeply felt southern soul. The title track unfolds with an almost cinematic grandeur, its string-laden chorus swelling with widescreen melancholy. Balancing the sultry with the strong, Train excels on bittersweet breakup/makeup numbers like “Don’t Remember” and “It’s Over Now.” As the aphorism of the album title suggests, the album tells the story of an indomitable spirit. Train knows how, over the course of a song, to walk away from a relationship with tremendous style.

Spilt Milk was recorded in London with Jimmy Hogarth, the sought-after British producer whose recent credits include Duffy, Corinne Bailey Rae and James Blunt. Powerhouse songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and arranger Eg White – Grammy Awards Record of the Year nominee for Adele’s “Chasing Pavements” – co-wrote most of this material. Singer and pianist Ed Harcourt also co-wrote two, including the climactic “Far From the Country,” an especially poignant and personal conclusion to the disc, about the physical and emotional distances one must bridge to keep love alive

For inspiration, Train turns to Aretha Franklin – “There is not a song that Aretha has sung or will ever sing that doesn’t just melt me” – along with blues/R&B cult figures like former Stax star/Raelette Mable John and Bob Dylan-favorite Karen Dalton. Says Train, “I wanted my album to offer glimpses of my influences, not sound like my influences. Jimmy, Eg and I are of similar backgrounds, we appreciate the same music; we have similar tastes. The arrangements are just what we felt the songs needed, they give the songs flavor but don’t try to steal anybody else’s style. I hope the album is a nod to the music I love, while still being modern.”

Music has been at the center of Train’s world since she was a toddler, when her mother encouraged her to play the violin. Train took to the instrument, but, more importantly, she also discovered an innate aptitude as a singer, with unerring pitch and a preternaturally mature delivery from a very young age. Says Train, “There’s depth to my voice and I think it comes from a lot of different places. But the way I sound today is the way I always sounded -- except in a tinier body.”

As an artist, Train could never simply be described as a product of her times and that has allowed her, on Spilt Milk, to create music that can arguably be called timeless. Her mom, who raised Train alone, fashioned what some might view as a sheltered existence for the young Train, keeping her away from television and pop radio. But what she really did was provide a fertile laboratory for Train to freely grow as a young woman and a singer, apart from the vagaries of trends. Train took music and ballet lessons and listened to classical music and opera, along with jazz and blues. Her violin training definitely came in handy: Train has arranging credits on three of her tracks and overdubbed strings on two of them.

Though born in New York City, Train was raised in Savannah, Georgia, and southern soul and gospel, which she sang in church and school choirs growing up, has had the most profound effect on her work. Almost as significant was the moment when, as a teenager, she unearthed her mom’s tucked-away stash of vinyl albums from the sixties and seventies: Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zepplin. Say Train,” I remember hearing Janis Joplin’s records and thinking, what is that all about? We lived in downtown Savannah, in a house kind of like a New York City brownstone. When we had thunderstorms I would go up to the roof and scream at the top of my lungs because I wanted to make my voice raspier. God only knows what that’s done to me!”

By the time Train was 19, she was already singing professionally, albeit locally. A producer based in the south who’d spotted Train arranged to bring her up to New York City to showcase for Blue Note. The label chiefs offered Train a development deal – but her mom had other ideas. She insisted her daughter go to college first. Many a confident and headstrong young artist would rebel and go it alone, accept the deal and take their chances. But Train – reluctantly, she now admits – listened to her mom. She agreed to attend college in Athens, Ga., keeping her hand in music by joining a band and spending far more time rehearsing and gigging than hitting the books. And when she was ready to return to her career full-time, Blue Note was still waiting.

It was time well-spent, Train now realizes: “I know that at 19, I would not have made this record, which is the record I always wanted to make. This is the album that defines who I am. At 19, I don’t know what I would have put out. I believe everything happened for a reason. It took this amount of time for me to get here and to make this record. I always knew it would happen. “

Train made several trips to London over the course of two years, to write with Hogarth and White, but the actual recording moved quickly. In fact, Train was such a natural that some of the vocal performances they chose came straight from the song demos they’d originally done. Right before they were about to embark on their final sessions, though, a disastrous computer glitch during file back-up resulted in the loss of much of what they’d already completed. As Train recalls, “It was the perfect electronic storm.” Undaunted, she and her cohorts went back in and re-cut the vanished material with even more passion and determination, the setback turning out to be far more inspiration than challenge. Looking back, Train says, “I don’t think anything was lost. I don’t think there was this one magic moment that we could never recapture. I love what it is today.” And the experience provided her with an album title. “Don’t cry over spilt milk.”

Train’s confidence and faith in what she has created is part of what makes Spilt Milk so thrilling: “There’s just this magic thing that happens sometimes and you think, I want to sing this song for the rest of my life – I want to live in it, I want to bury myself in it, I want to wriggle around in it.. Every time I finished one, it was like, I can’t believe that, at this point in my life I finally have a song I would fight for, that I believe in 100% percent. And now I have all these songs together on an entire album that I feel this way about. For me, that’s my college degree.”

Don't Leave Me Here Alone
Kristina Train Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

Don't leave me here alone
Now that our love had flown
From this a happy home
Please don't leave me alone

I'd sooner suffer lies
Than spend another night
Keeping the hope alive

That long since died

Somewhere just around the bend
Breaking waves will rise again
Morning dances from the dark
But my heart is stuck on start
I wasn't born on the wind
That's how the heartbreak begins
When your baby's gone
And you're holding on

Don't leave me here alone
Beneath the stars that sewn
In to the great unknown
Please don't leave me alone

Somewhere just around the bend
Seasons turn and time will mend
Morning dances from the dark
But my heart is stuck on start

I wasn't born on the wind
That's how the heartbreak begins
When you're baby's gone

And you're holding on
Don't leave me here alone

Overall Meaning

In Kristina Train's song "Don't Leave Me Here Alone," the singer pleads with their lover not to abandon them after their love has faded away. The singer acknowledges that their love may be over, but they still can't bear the thought of being alone. They would rather suffer lies than face the reality of their partner leaving them.

The lyrics contain vivid imagery of the singer being left in the dark, with their heart stuck on start. They long for the morning light to come, which represents the hope for a new beginning. Yet, they express their fear that their heartbreak will begin anew if their partner leaves. The lyrics suggest that the singer was not born with the ability to just let go and move on, but they desperately crave their partner's presence.

Overall, the song conveys the universal feeling of heartbreak and how difficult it can be to let go of someone we love. The message is delivered with Train's soulful voice and poetic lyrics, making it a beautiful and heartfelt ballad.

Line by Line Meaning

Don't leave me here alone
I don't want to be left alone without you

Now that our love had flown
Our love is gone and I don't want to be alone without you

From this a happy home
We used to have a happy home but not anymore

Please don't leave me alone
I'm begging you not to leave me alone

I'd sooner suffer lies
I would rather be lied to than be alone

Than spend another night
I'd rather be lied to than spend another night alone

Keeping the hope alive
Trying to maintain a hopeful attitude

That long since died
But I know deep down our love is dead

Somewhere just around the bend
Maybe there's hope for us in the future

Breaking waves will rise again
Our love could come back just as waves rise again

Morning dances from the dark
A new day could bring new hope