Saturday, February 27, 2010

Good Songs/Bad Songs

Hey Universe, Diefenbaker is working on a CRAPTON (sort of like Eric Clapton except it's a ton of crap, but that's also sort of like Eric Clapton. Perhaps they are the same thing.) of new material (also not that the new material is crap, just that there happens to be a lot of it) (I love parenthesis). For reals! As previously mentioned in my previous post, I've been working on writing a song. Usually Jeff does all the songwriting (and he'll be editing this one later), but I thought I'd write a song for a change, and honestly felt it to be rather challenging. I have quite a lot of four-line or less 'starter lyrics/hooks' saved in my phone, but I find actually fleshing it out and having the song make sense lyrically is actually quite difficult for me. So I wrote a song about that, of course.

Here's the lyrics thus far (there will doubtless be edits later):
The sun filtered through my dirty office window as I sat down carefully
My fingers slide along the black, nondescript keyboard
I’d much rather be at home, singing my heart out, fingers on the keys.
I open a new document, thinking about writing lyrics, writing songs.
My stacks of papers go on ignored, tasks forgotten.
I stare irritably at the blank screen, inspiration gone
I have so many good lines but no songs.

Then it hit me: All good songs have already been written.
All good songs have already been written
All good songs have already been written
There are millions of them out there, millions of bands, all of them amazing.
Who could possible care, who in the world would listen?
Hasn’t it already been said before?

I slump regretfully in my seat, my inspiration completely dashed
How can I compete with such genius? I'm neither talented nor clever
I write about music I love, honest music with no reservations
and music that I can’t stand, horrible overly produced bits of autotuned garbage
I can't listen to it any more, it's really dreadful
I want the singer to just tell me what is on their mind
tell me what they are really thinking

as I realize: A lot of bad songs have already been written.
A lot of bad songs have already been written
A lot of bad songs have already been written
Like Journey! Or Genesis! Phil Collins' entire solo career!
All these insincere bands writing terrible songs who went to school to be musicians
Perhaps there's some hope for my song after all

My heart races as I start to type
The words don't come too easily
But still I figure that I'd like to try
Because!

I realize: A lot of bad songs have already been written.
A lot of bad songs have already been written
A lot of bad songs have already been written
Like Eddie Murphy's "Party All The Time!" or anything currently on Top 40 Radio!
All these insincere bands writing terrible songs who went to school to be musicians

I do realize: A lot of bad songs have already been written.
A lot of bad songs have already been written
A lot of bad songs have already been written
There's too many bad songs to ever possibly mention!
All these insincere bands writing terrible songs who went to school to be musicians
Perhaps there's some hope for my song after all
There's quite a bit of Shari-weird and less Jeff-angst for a change which is nice. I'm feeling pretty accomplished. Most of the time I can't even finish sentences. (Me: "So I was thinking of going to the ...." Jeff: "Noun?" Me: "I've forgotten what I was saying.")

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