Songwriters Discussion Room--to share thoughts, projects, etc. | Page 7 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

@sigh butterfly That’s a very poignant and personal story you recounted. I could see it also aside from a song, expressed as a short story or even film, so many threads coming together. To me, it’s far more difficult to be openly personal in a song — not so much because of emotional reasons but it just seems harder to convey it adequately to do it justice, and usually comes out forced and even cheesy or cliche.  Luckily, my artistic tastes are inclined more toward the indirect, elliptical, oblique (and often seemingly nonsensical). The vast majority of my songs are not personal (though no doubt a Jungian psychotherapist could “find” the personal there, somehow!). Some of them may have indirect allusions to some event or feeling I’ve experienced, but it would take a creative private detective to piece together anything coherently personal from it.

I did once write a song directly expressing an experience & feeling as old as the hills — unrequited love & being rejected by a woman. This also reflects my ignorance of the Beatles at the time (early 90s) in that I didn’t know at the time that the first half of my song’s title was also a Beatles song — “I Feel Fine “. My second part in parentheses added an ironic twist:

I Feel Fine (Going Out Of My Mind).

I also didn’t know that some band already wrote a song with the second half as their title:

“Going Out of My Mind” is a song written by Terry McBride and Kostas, and recorded by American country music group McBride & the Ride. It was released in July 1992 …”

(But my ignorance there is more forgivable!)

My story doesn’t end there.  Even as that young woman had made clear her rejection (letting me down gently), she accepted my invitation to come over to my place where I effectively serenaded her with 3 songs.  Two of the songs were indirect and unrelated; the third was I Feel Fine (Going Out Of My Mind).  Her response was to cry, briefly; then she said she liked the third song best, musically!  My songwriter self was pleased with the best review one could get (even if the rest of my self was disappointed…).

1. Many of the songs I have written, even finished years ago, I still work on in terms of details, in my head.

2. One way I work on them is by running the song through my head, sometimes not even humming it, let alone not singing it or accompanying myself on my guitar, just “thinking” it through.

3. For #2, a key word is “sometimes”.  Probably most of the time I can’t help breaking into singing while I’m thinking through the song, also tapping out the tempo with my fingers, when I don’t get more serious and pick up the guitar to address it in a more concerted fashion.

4. While I’m thinking through the song, the tempo is important and often I haven’t fully fleshed out what it will be — and how drums and/or additional percussion will embody it — as the song navigates from one chord sequence to the next. 

5. Often I find myself unable to fully flesh out the tempo (+ the drums/percussion that embodies it) no matter how many times I run the song (or portions of the song) through my head.

6. The latest song I’m running through my head (several times a day, and as I drift off into sleep at night) is my song “Corduroys (Give Us A Smile)” is one where several areas or junctures remain where I can’t quite conceive how all the instruments, including drums/percussion, fit in exactly.

7. Part of this process involves toying with time signatures. Like most Westerners, I have an innate reflex to lapse into 4/4, but the way the lines of my lyrics play out, it seems a 4/4 structure would limit it too much, so I experiment with modifying it to add maybe one or more verses in 5/4, 7/4 or 9/4, etc.

8. Back to #5, some of the times I think the song through in my head I tell myself to focus on what the drums would do: should the drummer accent with a heavy snare hit during this portion? or should he tap the rim? should he stay on the hi-hat or transition to the ride cymbal here? what drum fills should he do?  where?  If I had my druthers, I would basically map out every last drum fill — and basically everything the drummer does — and leave no room for him to improvise.

Another thing some songwriters do is tinker with the words of their lyrics — almost as if they were writing fiction and not just reporting facts of their experience & life!  The tinkering is often done in order to fit the lyrics to a rhythm & melody, rather than the other way around. So we may ask of Gordon Lightfoot with regard to one line in his song “Old Dan’s Records” —

Bring out old Dan’s records, bring out old Dan’s records
I remember my Aunt Bea, she’d dance with Dan til two or three
If old Dan could see her now, I know he’d shout out loud!

—  was there really an “Aunt Bea” or did he fabricate her name in order to rhyme with “two or three”?  Or maybe there really was an Aunt Bea, but she only danced with Old Dan until midnight, so he fabricated the time!

I tend to prefer it when songwriters (& novelists) completely fabricate characters and events. A close second is when songwriters weave lyrics that you can’t figure out what exactly they’re talking about — very ambiguous and elusive. You can piece together maybe a theory of what it’s about, but you’re never sure, and there’s not much concrete in an ordinary way you can hang on to. We assume maybe some songwriters are using phrases they know are connected to some experience in their life but only they and maybe a few close friends (and some OCD nerd-journalists) know how they’re connected and what the original context was — otherwise, we average listeners can’t for the life of us figure it out! 

Here’s an example from James Taylor.  Now, somebody could come along and supply an article or interview that explains the whole song; but I kinda like not knowing…

Yellow and Rose

Yellow and rose, yellow and rose, yellow and rose…

Oh boy, Botany Bay, watching the water go by.
Here’s your home so far away, here is a tear for your eye.
Here is a vast and unknown land, here are the strangers on the sand.

Oh, seeds of the universe ever endeavor to grow.
Tiny pieces of everything, into the water they go.
Everything changes for the strangers on the shore.
They are blue and green no more, they are yellow and rose.

Down under got the south side of this groovy crazy planet.
Watching from the outside, it’s as smooth as a gravy sandwich.
People play music night for day, one caught the sun in a shekere…

Oh, seeds of the universe ever endeavor to grow.
Tiny pieces of everything, into the water they go.
Everything changes for the strangers on the shore.
They are blue and green no more, they are yellow and rose.

Remember when we thought we were in California? We thought it was the eye of the hurricane.
Old gypsy woman she tried to warn you, “You’ll be back this way again,
hungry for the rain, it’s written in your hand… plain.”

Oh, seeds of the universe ever endeavor to grow.
Tiny pieces of everything, into the water they go.
Everything changes for the strangers on the shore.
They are blue and green no more, they are yellow and rose.

Yellow and rose, yellow and rose, yellow and rose.