Part 2: The lyrics.
If anyone has read part 1 and you are still here for this then expect a long post and pre-amble. I don’t know if anyone is actually reading this but I genuinely believe that there might be someone out there, in the position I was in, who might benefit, so here goes:
Summer 2023 wasn’t the first time I have been challenged to write a song, it was just the first time I accepted the challenge. Maybe it was because 2023 was a significant birthday year and I feel the need to leave some artefact behind, more likely because I have been inspired by a close friend of similarly advanced years who happens to be a bloody good songwriter.
I have often been asked why I can’t write songs. I mess around on Piano and Guitar and sometimes come up with nice tunes. I’ve even recorded a few (by recorded I mean straight into an iPhone mouthpiece, not ‘recorded’ recorded). I don’t struggle with language. Neither my vocabulary nor articulation are particularly deficient. I can express ideas with clarity when I am sober; aka known as in the morning. So, I know how to say whatever I want to say. But therein is the rub:
THE REASON I CANNOT WRITE SONGS IS BECAUSE I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY
Sorry for the shouting but this is the excuse that has lain at the back of my mind for as long as I can remember. I have had a nice life, most would say blessed. I don’t have any tragedies to write about. I don’t have strong social or political views. I could write about my lovely wife, but that’s hardly original. I have no religious faith. I am your average suburban middle class normal boring guy. I hear, to pick at random, the lyrics to ‘Fast Car’ and it makes my skin tingle. That must be the work of someone who has lived that experience or knows someone who has. Where’s my fast car?
So, we left part one with the chord sequence complete and the melody to ‘Don’t Say My Name’ locked in at its new tempo with the phrase ‘Don’t bring my name up in polite conversation’ as a placeholder for the rhythmic structure of a possible lyric. I then could not resist the idea of ‘They won’t want me around’ partly because it is a rhythmic fit and partly because it drags the mood of the song down where that minor iv chord seems desperate to take it. The questions now though are: Who am I? Who are you? and Who are they?
Obviously, the idea of ‘bad boy meets nice rich girl and parents disapprove’ comes to mind. Two problems though: 1. It has been done so well before, ‘uptown girl’ etc and 2. I am the polar opposite of the wild bad boy. Then it hits me……. Songs, even those written in first person perspective, don’t have to contain even a grain of truth. They can be stories. This gives the writer the complete freedom that a novelist or other story-teller has. The song’s protagonist can be absolutely anyone; doesn’t even have to be human. This ‘revelation’ will sound so silly to most of you, but to me it was THE critical turning point. Why was I labouring under the misapprehension that the emotions conveyed in a song have to be real? Ideally, they would be I guess but I’m not trying to be Bob Dylan - I just want some useable lyrics.
And so to develop my character:
I decide to twist the typical story. I shall be a wealthy city boy, seven figure bonus, cocaine, drink, fast-life type. She is from a small dreams, small town background. Her family/close friends are respectable, god-fearing poor-but-proud dullards. So why wouldnt they want me around?
They would fear that I would lead their girl astray:
“And we will trip together, new destinations
Learning how to live
So tell your friends just what you did on vacation
But don’t tell them who with”
And, although they would kid themselves that they’d disdain my lifestyle, they’d fear that they too would be dragged in and, metaphorically, destroyed:
“I’ll draw their lives into my own conflagration
Burn them to the ground
So no they won’t want me around”
But mostly they’d fear the existential crisis that would come from admitting that the small aspirations that they foist upon their girl would condemn her to a mundane life similar to their own:
“I’ll take their dreams and put them into perspective
Proud before their fall
I’ll hold a mirror to them, curved and corrective
So they won’t like me at all”
Etc.
So that’s the process that liberated my creativity, such as it is: Create a character to be the songs protagonist. Build a simple story around the character. Inhabit the character and let the lyrics fall out naturally.
Now I am starkly aware that I’ve spent more time typing this post than I spent writing the song and that there is likely nobody still reading ;-). So I’ll shut up, until the next song.
Cheers - John.
