More Than a Feeling

Tom Scholz was an engineer at Polaroid when he started recording this song. He built his own equipment. He designed his own effects pedals. He spent five years—five years—layering guitars in his basement until he had something that sounded like a memory feels.

That’s what this song is. The sound of looking backward and aching for something you can’t quite name.

“More Than a Feeling” opens with an acoustic guitar figure that’s become shorthand for a certain kind of longing. Then the electric guitars enter, harmonized and soaring, and Brad Delp’s voice floats in like someone calling from another room.

The song is about a girl named Marianne. Who is Marianne? Doesn’t matter. She’s every first love. She’s everyone who got away. She’s the version of your life that didn’t happen.

Scholz’s perfectionism bordered on obsession. He recorded demo after demo, tweaking frequencies, adjusting levels, stacking guitar tracks until they created that distinctive wall of sound—thick and warm and somehow both powerful and gentle. The label thought they were getting a quick album. They got something that took years to make and sounds like it.

Delp’s vocals are the secret weapon. That high tenor, clear and strong, riding on top of those guitars like someone walking on clouds. When he hits the chorus, something happens in your chest. That’s not an accident. That’s engineering.

The song structure is classic: quiet verse, building pre-chorus, explosive chorus, repeat. But the execution elevates it beyond formula. The guitar harmonies in the bridge. The way the dynamics swell and recede. The production that somehow sounds both of its time and timeless.

“When I’m tired and thinking cold, I hide in my music, forget the day.” That’s the whole thesis. Music as escape. Music as time machine. Music as the only reliable way back to who you used to be.

Scholz was right to take five years. Some things can’t be rushed.

Some feelings need that long to get right.