American Songwriter » David Mead

Cover Girl: Taylor Swift And The Unbearable Likeness Of Singing

David Mead — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:54:41 +0000

“Honey, wake up.”

I began to emerge from an allergy-induced Saturday slumber. Sunlight streamed through the bedroom blinds. Screams and music were chirping out of my wife’s laptop speakers.

“Honey.” She grabbed my elbow and gently shook it.

“Baby, respect,” I grunted. “I am ill.”

“Wake up! Taylor Swift is playing your song.”

Well, then. I opened my eyes and beheld a blonde siren sitting under a purple tree while playing “Nashville” over the din of 15,000 very enthusiastic people. It was one of those crappy videos shot with a phone, the image bobbing up and down in a sea of silhouetted arms and heads. I couldn’t hear the music that well over the whoops and hollers, but it sounded like she was laying into it pretty good. It sounded like she meant it.

I wrote “Nashville” in 2002. It was a farewell salute to one chapter of my life and an admission of complete ignorance regarding the next. I started it on a 20-hour, amphetamine-fueled drive in a U-Haul from Brooklyn to Nashville via Pittsburgh and finished it a few months later on a train between Rhinecliff, NY and Manhattan. I remember thinking that the phrase ‘Goin’ back to Nashville’ sounded impossibly goofy, like something only Ryan Adams could get away with singing. But nothing sounded better, so I kept it and tried to make the rest of the song especially sparse and haunting in order to contrast with its stupid chorus.

It was a little odd, nine years later, to hear this person with whom I most likely had very little in common making “Nashville” her own. My experience with the song had always been very intimate, very small. I had always thought of it as the kind of thing that might be spoken softly during a midnight phone call. It never occurred to me that it might serve as a rallying cry for an arena full of people.

A song is defined by its singer. Unlike paintings, buildings or sculptures, songs don’t fully exist in static form. The words and notes written on a page are only part of the work; the rest of it is the experience shared between the song’s interpreter and an audience. The identity of the song changes with each new performance, and this constant state of flux extends its lifespan. This is why music is a living, breathing art form: It requires engagement to achieve relevance.

I don’t know Taylor Swift, but she seems like a pretty extroverted person who happens to possess a gift for expressing very intimate emotions in a way to which a large number of people can relate. This is rare. As I watched her performance of “Nashville,” I felt, among other things, a sense of relief that she had taken it upon herself to perform it to so many people. I doubt I would have ever had the chutzpah to attempt such a thing.

The video ended, and the tiny screen was immediately flooded with multiple thumbnail images of other Taylor Swift performances, an infinite number of experiential options, a bottomless cauldron of digital possibilities. I was suddenly exhausted, happy to be watching from afar as one of my own finally made its way out into the nether-reaches of that dry and endless Universe. I farted, snuggled back into my wife’s armpit and sank into the sleep of the dead.

David Mead's new album DUDES is now available for pre-sale on iTunes and will be available everywhere November 15. You can also download his 25 song career retrospective '25 Days To Dudes' here and follow David's daily journal entries about each song on his Facebook page.

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How To Make The Whole World Sing: “Last Goodbye”

David Mead — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:25:23 +0000

There is no shortage of superlatives to apply to Jeff Buckley. Amazing. Genius. Jaw-dropping. Ecstatic. Tragic. Angelic. Oddly enough, too few of them have been specifically directed toward his songwriting. This is unfortunate, if understandable: Buckley’s brief life and musical output were full of the sort of detail and experience that make for great biography and legend building. His incomparable voice, musical lineage and matinee-idol cheekbones would have been enough to shoot any performer into star-making orbit, and matters weren’t helped by the fact that Buckley became known as an expert interpreter of other people’s songs before his own writing style had a chance to fully blossom. Regardless, Buckley penned a number of truly powerful and highly unique songs that can teach us plenty about how we approach our own writing. One of his most successful attempts is “Last Goodbye.” A quick troll through the myriad of sub-par cover versions on YouTube reveals what is so attractive about the song and, ultimately, its composer: “Last Goodbye” is completely and utterly its own animal, a rare integration of seemingly disparate elements that somehow work together seamlessly. While the song’s slide guitar intro and main guitar riff are decidedly Missisippi Delta, its rhythmic propulsion is more Detroit, almost danceable, while the harmonic structure of its foundational guitar chords drone away with the melancholic dissonance of North Africa. Then Buckley’s voice enters, gliding effortlessly over a melody that slowly ascends through the verses, never quite repeating itself, just slowly, sensually building a theme. Buckley purrs like Etta James, flutters like Edith Piaf and moans like Marvin Gaye, sometimes all within the same line. It is simply a fantastic performance. “Last Goodbye” does not unfold in any kind of traditional structure. The song follows its own intuitive path, allowing the narrative of the lyric to develop naturally rather than limiting it to the repetitiveness of a chorus or refrain. It is not really a story with a beginning and end as much as a rumination, a reflection, the repeated viewing of the same events from slightly different musical perspectives. Its dynamic shifts subtly pull the listener to its penultimate scene, a moment of reckoning set to the sound of softly ringing church bells, the sort of emotional punctuation more common to the end of a Marcello Mastroianni film than something released on a major record label. Ultimately, it is not a song to be very easily imitated, but “Last Goodbye” offers a songwriter a lot to think about. First and foremost, it is a fearless attempt at creating something new. It demonstrates that its composer was well-versed in an impressive variety of music and, more importantly, was not afraid to blend them together in the pursuit of something unique. Buckley’s success in doing this begs the question: As a writer, are you continually exposing yourself to new styles of music? We should never underestimate the power of our subconscious creative minds to reassemble new sounds, rhythms and harmonic structures into something wholly unique. Writing is as much about listening as putting pen to paper. Finally, “Last Goodbye” encourages us to forget about the math and formulas in which we occasionally get stuck when writing. The seemingly loose structure of the song actually tightens the focus on its subject matter by mirroring the stream-of-consciousness process by which its thematic emotions often play out. Buckley not only portrayed the end of a relationship in a form that feels raw and unedited, but also infused it with enough musical dynamic to keep its energy building to crescendo. This is not easily accomplished (if you don’t believe me, head down to your local coffee shop and check out the opening act on any given Tuesday night), but it’s worth trying. So ask yourself: While writing, are you listening to your intuition and emotions about a song? Or just fitting lines into a lyrical and musical equation that you’ve heard a hundred times before? Don’t be afraid to mix it up a little. Buckley never was.

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How To Make The Whole World Sing: Citizen Cope -”Sideways”

David Mead — Mon, 02 May 2011 10:00:49 +0000

Sometimes a great song is defined as much by what the lyric doesn’t say as what it does. One of the advantages of writing a song as opposed to writing literature, painting a portrait or building a house is the extraordinary context that the music provides for the lyric. Sometimes good melody and chord structure allows a lyricist to say very little, leaving the music to imply the rest of the story. Intriguing plot lines and amazing imagery are impressive, but feel horribly out of place if they crowd the emotional content of the music. The ability to provide just enough information in the lyric is what separates great lyricists from great writers. Clarence Greenwood, who records and performs under the moniker Citizen Cope, is one of these rare lyricists. “Sideways,” from 2004’s The Clarence Greenwood Recordings, is perhaps his best-known composition (having been covered by Carlos Santana and Sheryl Crow, among others) and is a perfect example of Greenwood’s uncanny ability to write unadorned, minimal lyrics that serve the emotional intent of the song. The entire lyric is only 12 lines long: You know it ain’t easy for these thoughts here to leave me Ain’t no words to describe it in French or in English ‘Cause diamonds they fade and flowers they bloom And I’m telling you That these feelings won’t go away They been knocking me sideways They been knocking me out lately Whenever you come around me These feelings won’t go away They been knocking me sideways I keep thinking in a moment that time will take them away But these feelings won’t go away Over the duration of his 5:27 version, Greenwood interchanges a few sections but never adds any additional words. The chorus is actually repeated no less than five times. The melody is sparse and unadorned, its phrasing subtle with only a few twists thrown in here and there. The arrangement and orchestration are, at times, breathtakingly beautiful, but do not contain the moments of instrumental punctuation often required to entertain a short attention span. Yet “Sideways” never seems to lose intensity; in fact, the song is basically one long crescendo from beginning to end that does not let the listener go until the very last tag of the final chorus. So how does Greenwood pull this off? In Jimmy McDonough’s excellent biography of Neil Young, Shakey, Young compares writing a good song to building a house, saying that the goal is to build a solid, unadorned structure in which the listener might picture himself living, filled with his own family, possessions and memories. To extend the metaphor, you might say that the lyricist’s job in this process is to “stage” the house with just enough furniture as to clue the listener into how his own emotions might fit into the structure of the song. Greenwood’s opening line (“You know it ain’t easy for these thoughts here to leave me”) sums up the entire song in a conversational manner, as easy to understand as opening a front door and walking into a living room. The only leading detail in the verse lyric is the confession of having “no words to describe it in French or in English,” the lyrical equivalent of a lone souvenir from Marseille left on a bookshelf, meant to inspire the slightest bit of wonder and possibility. The chorus of “Sideways” is sneakily duplicitous. Repeated readings of the lyric, as straightforward as it seems, do not give much clue as to whether it is about the beginning or the end of a relationship. Greenwood’s delivery could be taken as intensely devotional or heartbreakingly mournful, depending on what mood you might be in while listening. It’s as if the song can be whatever the listener needs it to be, a paean just as easily delivered over a candle-lit dinner as brayed at the moon on a solitary evening of grief. It is difficult to write a lyric as emotionally powerful and intentionally ambiguous as “Sideways,” but the key to the process is remembering that a listener is usually more interested in their own emotions than the writer’s. All the writer has to do is help the listener find them.

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How To Make The Whole World Sing: “Irreplaceable”

David Mead — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 12:00:48 +0000

In the winter of 2007, I was riding the F train home to my apartment in Brooklyn. There were only four or five other passengers in my car, one of whom was a chubby teenage girl sitting a few feet away from me, nodding along to the music on her iPod. My head was buried in a magazine, thinking subway thoughts when, suddenly, the girl burst out in a loud, slightly atonal refrain: “To the left, to the left…” I rolled my eyes in her direction. She began peacocking her head from side to side while sliding her butt back and forth on our bench, waving both of her hands in the air and snapping along to a tinny beat seeping out of her earbuds, barely audible above the clatter of the train wheels. “To the left, to the left…” I went back to my magazine, thinking about how New York makes the most private moments public and, occasionally, communal. The girl began singing incoherent lyrics to a melody that benefited greatly from her obvious enthusiasm and was granted immunity to her lack of pitch control. I began surreptitiously watching her again in the reflection of the opposite window: She was now pointing her finger at an imaginary antagonist across from her, pursing her lips and shaking her head as she launched into what had to be the chorus of the song, its lyrics suddenly coming out clear as daylight: You must not know ‘bout me, you must not know ‘bout me I could have another you in a minute Matter fact he’ll be here in a minute You must not know ‘bout me, you must not know ‘bout me I could have another you by tomorrow So don’t you ever for a second get to thinking You’re irreplaceable I knew it had to be a Beyonce song. Despite my claims of being a certified participant in the music industry, I was, at the time, only aware of Beyonce in the same vague manner as anyone not subscribed to MTV: She was out there, like the weather, mostly pleasant and completely unavoidable. Regardless, it had become impossible to not notice her omniscient media presence and incredible musical consistency, the way she fit Tin Pan Alley melodies into hip hop phrasing that switched from rapid-fire to behind-the-beat-trippy at the snap of a garter strap. In fact, Beyonce had been dominating the charts for so long that it was difficult to remember a time when it was remotely unacceptable for “Independent Women” to be “Soldier(s)” while appearing “Bootylicious.” Beyonce wasn’t just an artist; she was a social revolution. And the girl on the subway was part of it, at least in body and spirit: The song might have been good, but her a cappella version was beginning to grate on me. I tried to concentrate on the magazine. I had spent the day in Manhattan looking for work, trying to line up another month’s worth of income to be fed into the constant stream of outgoing expenditures that accompany freelance existence in any metropolis. I had chosen the lightly-populated subway car near the rear of the train in search of some peace and quiet. My feet hurt. I respected, even applauded, the girl’s right to burst into song wherever she pleased but… did it have to be right next to me, today? Finally, I let my magazine plop into my lap and turned to face her with a particular mix of incredulity and empathy designed to broker some sort of passive-aggressive compromise. I was surprised to find her looking towards me now, singing straight into my eyes: You must not know ‘bout me, you must not know ‘bout me… She was still moving her head side to side, pointing this way and that, even looking into her ample cleavage suggestively before fixing me again with a sultry stare and a twisted smile. I was immediately disarmed, embarrassed and unable to return her gaze for more than a second or two. In that moment, it really didn’t matter that I was probably 15 years older than her, that I was married, that I had an adult life and the responsibilities that came with it, that I knew a thing or two about music… She had Beyonce on her side, and I was at her mercy. Ironically, a full year passed before I actually heard Beyonce’s version of “Irreplaceable” in my car while driving south through Virginia on I-81. My marriage had ended a few months before along with my New York residency. I was on the return leg of one last trip to my former apartment in Brooklyn to collect my dog and some belongings for relocation to my new home in my father’s Nashville basement. The girl on the subway had long ago been relegated to that little memory file that all former New Yorkers reserve for strange occurrences that happen only in New York but, as I was scanning through local radio stations for something listenable, she came back to me in a flash: To the left, to the left… The song played on, and I heard myself mumbling along, somehow tracing out a melody that I had only heard once. I began to bob my head, eliciting a frightened look from my dog in the passenger seat. As the gray colonial landscape whizzed by, the song moved effortlessly into its first pre-chorus: Standing in the front yard telling me how I’m such a fool Talkin’ ‘bout how I’ll never ever find a man like you The first chorus hit me like a tidal wave. My eyes began to sting and the highway got blurry. I thought about the girl on the train. I thought about my wife. About the future, the chilling and barren clarity of things. About how many people must have had this exact same moment with this song. It was the first time I had felt connected to anything in awhile. I pressed the gas pedal a little harder and sang: You must not know ‘bout me, you must not know ‘bout me…

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How To Make The Whole World Sing: “Bridge Over Troubled Water”

David Mead — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:00:36 +0000

It’s not the easiest thing in the world to write a song about friendship. Friendship, like romantic love or third-world poverty, is a topic so immeasurably layered and complicated that it does not lend itself to the sort of easy explanation normally found in garden variety pop ditties. Many songwriters have attempted to encapsulate the idea, usually with less-than-awesome results that only confirm suspicions that they just don’t understand our kind of friendships. We like to believe, after all, that our friendships are unique, magical, at once totally reliable yet quirkily indefinable. Whether this is actually true seems beside the point; we just don’t want to hear another cheesy song about buddies. Paul Simon may have been pondering this when he sat down to write “Bridge Over Troubled Water” in the summer of 1969. Holed up alone in a rented house in Los Angeles, he was waiting for his musical partner Art Garfunkel to return from a movie shoot in Mexico, at which point they would begin recording what would become their final studio album together. For years Simon had listened to gospel radio in New York, especially on Sundays when he could find little else on the radio. That day in L.A., he set out to write a song that felt “a little like a Sam Cooke number.” Simon and Garfunkel’s relationship had already become fractured by this point; it is said that Simon had probably foreseen their coming demise and was already looking for a graceful way to leave what had become one of America’s best-loved duos. So that day, at the house on Blue Jay Way, he sat down and wrote what became more than another happy-go-lucky song about friendship; he created a masterpiece about a promise to be kept, no matter what. The mechanics of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” are basically flawless. The opening chords lightly gravitate and suspend over a single-note bass line, and a simple melody wraps itself around the opening lyrics like a velvet glove: When you’re weary, feeling small When tears are in your eyes I will dry them all Simon performs a very simple but effective trick under the second and third lines, moving the bass line with the chords for the first time in the song. This emphasizes and separates the lines from the two preceding ones, unfolding the story just a bit, hinting at things to come. Had the chords stayed the same, the melody and lyrics might have run the risk of sounding a bit redundant. There is a brief pre-chorus section that drops the melody over the V chord and the lyric… I’m on your side Oh, when times get rough … another wise move that saves the additional Platonic reassurance from becoming trite. And then, the chorus that, to this day, pretty much everybody in every country on every planet can sing back to you, without fail: and friends just can’t be found like a bridge over troubled waters I will lay me down Like a bridge over troubled waters I will lay me down I particularly like that the chorus is the one section of the song in which the language aspires to poetry. It is the only lyric that contains any allegory or metaphor whatsoever. (The later reference to a “silver girl” is not, as reported, about a heroin needle, but rather a reference to Simon’s girlfriend, who had recently found a few gray hairs for the first time.) Simon supports this choice by unleashing the soaring melody with which we are now all so familiar (“the juggernaut,” Garfunkel once called it). The song effectively completes its transition from micro to macro at this moment, morphing from whisper to massive exultation in one sweeping motion. Great art touches us in a deeply personal way and enables us to share the experience at a universal level. “Bridge Over Troubled Water” accomplishes this by setting an incredibly intimate lyric to a musical background that is, whether the song is performed with just voice and piano or experienced in S & G’s production, totally epic. This is what makes it a classic song. Like great oratory or architecture, great songs show us a piece of ourselves and elevate that piece into harmony with the rest of the world. “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is about someone’s darkest hour but somehow manages to evoke purple mountain majesties and long, unbroken fields of grain. It is not only an eminently hummable piece of music; it is a real and unapologetic collective moment.

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How To Make The Whole World Sing: “American Saturday Night”

David Mead — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 12:00:23 +0000

Country music is the most lyrically conversational of all song genres. Jazz and punk songs, for example, can rely on a more visceral and intuitive musical language to create their own universes, weaving both complex and simple musical themes in a flurry of saxophone notes or one power chord struck with authority. The interplay between Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie’s horns is as colloquial as the call-and-response vocals of The Ramones, but neither completely live or die based on their conversational element. Country songs are different; instead of taking a simple theme and infusing it with a transcendent melodic motif or riotous energy, they more often tackle a complex issue and refine it to its simplest form, using intimate language most appropriate to a back porch rocker or beaten-up bar stool. If it can’t be said simply, it’s probably not country. Brad Paisley’s “American Saturday Night” (co-written with Ashley Gorley and Kelly Lovelace) is exceptional because it expands the conversational parameters of country from their more traditional first or second person confines into full-on social commentary. The song takes the rather complex idea of the American Melting Pot and condenses it into an easily digestible ideal, not by simplifying the concept, but by illustrating it with a multitude of easily overlooked details, the tiny individual threads of the American way of life. The result is an impressive exercise in detail and rhyme scheme that is closer to Noel Coward and Cole Porter than Waylon Jennings. Observe: She’s got Brazilian leather boots on the pedal of her German car Listen to the Beatles singing back in the USSR yeah she’s goin’ around the world tonight but she ain't leavin here she’s just going to meet her boyfriend down at the street fair It's a French kiss, Italian ice Spanish moss in the moonlight just another American Saturday night The trick here is convincing the listener to consider the Brazilian boots, German car, British band and the Soviet Union as things relevant to their lives, not just a list of deftly juxtaposed details that sing nicely. This happens in the third, fourth and fifth lines of the verse, where the writers attach the different elements to a character we all know well: A normal small-town girl going to a street fair. These lines could have been full of more cleverly laid out details, but Paisley and Co. wisely take a moment to root them in an image to which we can all easily relate. But “American Saturday Night” doesn’t stop at telling the story of one girl. It actually uses the girl as a device to get us into the life of an entire town which, as it turns out, is full of even more details that support the central theme of the song: There's a big toga party tonight down at Delta Chi they've got Canadian bacon on there pizza pie they've got a cooler full of cold Coronas and Amstel light It's like were all livin' in a big ol' cup just fire up the blender, mix it all up After a second chorus, we are treated to a bridge that effectively sums the idea of the song up in a different way than the chorus is able: You know everywhere there's something there known for Although usually it washes up on our shores My great great great granddaddy stepped off of that ship I bet he never ever dreamed we'd have all this “American Saturday Night” is even more impressive in that, in the context of the current fears regarding immigration and the economy, it manages to be simultaneously reassuring and slightly subversive. My guess is that programmers at country radio might not have been totally enthusiastic about spinning a song that championed ethnic diversity. But Paisley circumvented this by turning a potentially fractious subject into something eloquently and triumphantly patriotic. On Music Row, these dichotomies do not occur very often. Paisley, Gorey and Lovelace deserve a lot of credit not only for writing a technically brilliant song but also reminding us that what we sometimes fear can be exactly what makes us stronger.

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How To Make The Whole World Sing: “Anytime”

David Mead — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:46:01 +0000

Crafting a good bridge is of the trickiest parts of writing a song. There are plenty of ways to do it well and just as many ways to screw it up, royally. The most important thing to determine is whether or not your song actually needs a bridge. Inserting a gratuitous passage after the second chorus is a great way to get a listener’s eyes rolling, just as losing your song’s lyrical impact in the morass of a stopgap guitar solo is a great way to leave them feeling downright bored. If your song needs a bridge, don’t be lazy; step up and finish the job. So how do you decide whether or not your song needs a bridge? And, if it does, how do you go about writing one? Try thinking of your latest song as a conversation between two friends in which one is trying to make a particular point like, say, what a douche her ex-boyfriend happens to be. First, she relates an event that occurred: “He said he didn’t have money for the rent, then he went on a two-day bender with Tito.” Then, she details her reaction to the event: “I said, ‘You better get your shit together, Jimmy. Fuck Tito.’” Then, to further her point, she relates another event that occurred: “He borrowed my car and brought it back with a smashed fender.” Then she, in no uncertain terms, restates her reaction: “I said, ‘You better get your shit together, Jimmy. Fuck Tito.’” For the adventurous writer, these four segments could provide a rough outline for a song in verse/chorus/verse/chorus format. Now for the big question: Does she need to say anything else to prove that Jimmy is a douche? Probably not but, for the sake of argument, let’s pretend that her friend has been chummy with Jimmy since elementary school. The friend requires more convincing. Taking a deep breath, our protagonist relaxes her body language, lowers her voice a bit, and approaches the subject from a different angle: “Look. It’s not that I don’t love Jimmy. I do. He may be a douche, but he’s my douche. I think that what I’m beginning to realize is that Tito is the problem. I gotta get rid of Tito so I can keep Jimmy.” And there you have it: A bridge. A bridge can also serve as a kind of transition for the narrative of your song, the point at which things are revealed to not be as they seem. To accomplish this, it always helps me to think of a bridge in filmic terms, like a dramatic scene change in which the location, lighting and dialogue are all carefully set apart from anything that has preceded them. This usually works, as long as I remain careful to not confuse the elements so much that I can’t to get back to the original feel and theme of the story. Coming out of bridge is just as important as getting into one. Neil Finn is incredibly good at doing this, among many other tricky songwriting maneuvers. His bridges consistently shed a new light on whatever he has been singing about up to the point of their entrance. Take a listen to the bridge of his 2002 rumination on mortality, “Anytime:” Anytime It could come without a warning Anytime It could be so easy A walk in the park Maybe when I’m sleeping Anytime See the clouds come over I make you so unhappy Let’s make it right The preceding verses of the song list a lot of potentially lethal random events, while the choruses ponder the fact that Finn could go “Anytime.” All of the verse events occur in present tense and are delivered over an ascending chord progression that creates a fair amount of tension. By the end of the second chorus, it might be assumed that the song is just a treatise on the dangers of remaining upright. But the bridge changes all that. The first clue that we might be getting a new take on things comes in the form of a eight-measure modulation, which catches our attention as effectively as our female protagonist from the conversation above heaving a heavy sigh and planting her hand on her hip. Over a pad of new Beatle-esque harmonies, Finn begins singing lines that answer the sentiments expressed in the verses in a high, exasperated yell. This goes on until the music holds on the VI chord of the original key, over which Finn finally croons “Let’s make it right,” before the song falls back into the verse chord progression. With those words, the theme of the song goes from being “Life is unpredictable, it could end anytime” to “Life is unpredictable, so let’s work things out now.” Your newest song may or may not need a bridge. But, if you haven’t already written one or are struggling in the process, step back for a moment and try to think of your song as a conversation or film. Is it making its point? Does it need a little help? Then it might be time for a bridge. Let me know how it goes… I’ll be over here polishing up my latest, “Fuck Tito.” I think it’s a hit.

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How To Make The Whole World Sing: “Back In Black”

David Mead — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:06:57 +0000

On occasion, I receive some very kind correspondence regarding this blog. On others, not so much: Last Thursday, a scathing missive from Rhonda in Omaha jumped out at me from my inbox like a demented hedgehog. Rhonda, in a most decidedly post-Shakespearian English, detailed the ways in which the opinions expressed here were providing no help whatsoever to either her or any other songwriters. She claimed that my “uppity words” and general vagueness were confusing, and that her thirteen-year old son knew more about writing a good chorus than I ever would. She felt that my occasional profanity was unnecessary and unwelcome on her browser. She thought that my choice of songs was lacking, and seemed exceptionally irritated that she’d never heard of me. She pointed out that the paucity of comments on the blog obviously indicated a general lack of interest in it. So why was I even bothering?

Oh, Rhonda.

One of the most important skills a songwriter must acquire is the ability to properly handle rejection. After reading Rhonda’s email, I passed a few hours downtown at a tiny Vietnamese brothel tucked into a hidden alley behind Lifeway Publishing, then took a nice stroll down to the Cumberland to reflect. Observing the slow progress of a stout little tugboat as it pulled a massive barge downriver, I remembered that, when faced with the inevitable dismissals and renunciations to which any work of art will be subjected, there is only one rule of survival: Never, ever, ever take this shit personally.

Whether we songwriters are performing our songs in a club, submitting them for placement in a film or merely attempting to convince Taylor Swift’s A&R person of their validity, we have to consider that fact that our intended audience is rarely looking for the best song; they are only looking for the right song. Like a theater director at an open-call audition, the listener wants our songs to play a specific role in their universe, to satisfy a need for which only they can understand. The club patron, music supervisor or corporate suit that we are intending to win over has a particular agenda for which our latest masterpiece must be appropriate. If it works for them, great; if not, “Next!”

It is nearly impossible for one song to be the right song for everyone at every time. When someone hates your work, take it as a complement and be happy that you have, if nothing else inspired an impassioned reaction. Old songs fade in and out of relevance to our own lives just as new ones seem immediately attractive or terrible. For example, I can go for years without feeling the need to hear a Beatles song. Considering the massive amount of impact that their work has had on my life, it seems odd that I might bear to be without it for very long. Then again, at this point in history, nearly every song in the pop lexicon has at least a little Beatles in it; I can go for quite awhile without hearing a note of Revolver, but I never really get that far away from it. Regardless, a crystalline moment will eventually materialize, perhaps whilst reclining on the weathered floral divan of a house of ill repute, in which the introductory chords of “Taxman” pop through a haze of opium smoke. Suddenly, I’m on the floor, hips gyrating in a gloriously inappropriate fashion, feet crushing tea cups, arms flying at odd angles, lost in the joys of pure auditory satisfaction and a fine mist of Mace raining down from the ladies on the balcony. Let me tell you how it will be…

What the hell was I talking about? Ah, the river.

As the setting sun pinkened the water under the Woodland St. bridge, I heard a monstrous truck engine rattle to a halt in the parking lot behind me. There was an ominous moment of silence before a monstrous E chord shot out of the truck window, over my head, across the water and smack into the football stadium, where it began spreading out over the entire city, a dark cloud pulsing with thunder, its power unmatched, its majesty unquestioned.

Soon a demonic vocal was ripping into my consciousness like the blade of a chainsaw, and I realized that the central theory of my entire afternoon was not entirely concrete. Maybe Rhonda was right; I don’t know what I’m talking about.

For there is one song that is pretty much perfect for every occasion. Morning, noon, night, barroom, bedroom, cradle, grave, Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, at your best, at your worst: AC/DC’s “Back in Black” is always the right song. It operates on a level that defies analysis, and you will find none here. But allow me to offer a tender dedication to you, to Rhonda, to everyone out there suffering the temporary tragedy of disappointment:

Back in black
I hit the sack
I've been too long I'm glad to be back
Yes I'm, let loose
From the noose
That's kept me hanging about
I keep looking at the sky
'Cause it's gettin' me high
Forget the hearse 'cause I'll never die
I got nine lives
Cat's eyes
Usin' every one of them and running wild

'Cause I'm back
Yes, I'm back
Well, I'm back
Yes, I'm back
Well, I'm back, back
(Well) I'm back in black
Yes, I'm back in black

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How To Make The Whole World Sing: “Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard”

David Mead — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 14:15:03 +0000

Paul Simon’s “Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard” offers a multitude of educational opportunities for the aspiring songwriter. The song functions so well on so many levels that it is difficult to pick just one on which to focus. It has great melody, humor, intrigue, whistling… and the word “pajama.” Who could ask for anything more? Recently, while viewing Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums” for the 367th time, one particular aspect of “Julio” jumped out at me. The song is used for the triumphant scene in which Royal takes his grandsons out for a day of garbage truck riding, dog fighting and shoplifting, and I was struck by how much energy it lent the scene. Then I realized that its instrumental track is, basically, nothing more than a couple of loose acoustic guitars, sparse bass and light percussion. Yet the song had more mischievous, rollicking impact than the last three Fall Out Boy singles combined. So what’s the secret? As I already mentioned, there are a lot of great things happening at once, but for the purpose of this humble missive we’ll focus on lyrical cadence. Lyrical cadence is a concept that we often don’t take into consideration when writing songs, but it is damn important. It is the rhythm in which the words of a song are delivered, the internal propulsion that is generated only by the lyric. You can have some smart words and a gorgeous melody that sits nicely with some well-considered chords but, without a good rhythmical framework, they are nothing more than a flurry of pretty notes. The right lyrical cadence gives them impact. Check out the lyrics in the first verse of “Julio:” The mama pajama rolled out of bed And she ran to the police station When the papa found out he began to shout And he started the investigation It's against the law It was against the law What the mama saw It was against the law Now, there are probably 50 different ways to fit those words into a song, but Simon chooses to arrange them into a cadence that mirrors a horn part. It stutters and flutters, occasionally counterpointing against the rhythm of the guitar and sometimes staccatoing right along with it. For example, the “ma,” “ja” and “ro” syllables in the first line fall in a triplet pattern that injects a little New Orleans into the proceedings. This is answered in the third line by a straighter, choppier rhythm (featuring the internal rhyme of the words “out” and “shout”) that gives a more severe character to “the papa’s” actions and immediately suggests a few different possible outcomes for the rest of the song. The second verse continues in a similarly tricky and infectious cadence that finally releases into a more open chorus: Well I’m on my way I don’t know where I’m going I’m on my way I’m taking my time but I don’t know where Goodbye Rosie, the Queen of Corona See you, me and Julio down by the schoolyard See you, me and Julio down by the schoolyard Just in time, Simon gives us a little breathing room. The longer notes he uses for the words “going” and “Rosie” set us up perfectly for the tag line of the song, in which he stuffs seven syllables (“see you, me and Julio”) into a nifty little phrase that could have come from the middle of a Charlie Parker solo. Truthfully, lyrical cadence is much more easily felt than taught, more intuitive than analytical. It is one of the most difficult aspects of songwriting to master, but is also easier than you might think; you just have to be listening for it. Interesting rhythms for communication are, literally, all around us. Listen to a friend’s particular conversational style, or try to count four against the bird chirping in your backyard. If you want to stick to purely musical influence, get familiar with great rappers, many of whom are amazingly adept at picking up the nuances of different rhythmic patterns and then laying them against a straight beat. Jazz vocalists and instrumental soloists are also uncannily good at mixing up even the most tired melodies with fresh ideas. Your inspiration for good lyrical cadence is out there. Go find it and make it your own.

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How To Make The Whole World Sing: “4:33”

David Mead — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:03:55 +0000

We usually think of songwriting as an active process. We sit down, alone or with a partner, kick a few ideas around, play certain passages over and over again, refine them, reshape them, doubt them. We make coffee, play a round of Tetris, have a smoke. Then we go back and refine some more, add a bridge, drop an alternate line into the final chorus. We make a rough demo recording of our efforts, or perhaps record a full-blown master to give to our friend, the one who knows the cousin of Taylor Swift’s yoga teacher. She’s looking for something up-tempo, we’ve heard. But what we don’t often consider is that songwriting is also a passive process. Every great song begins with a tiny spark of inspiration that none of us can completely explain or account for. The recognition and development of that spark into a good idea is an active process, but the spark itself is not something we can easily control or initiate. It just is. The best thing that we can do is to be ready to catch it when it finally comes. John Cage’s composition “4:33” has been called everything from a pretentious waste of time to a groundbreaking investigation into the very space from where music originates. The piece calls for the conductor to give a single downbeat with his baton and then wait for the eponymous time period to pass. For the duration of the piece, the musicians do nothing. Yes, nothing. The piece is a study of silence, although its ‘performance’ is never one of total silence. Cage wants us to pay attention to the small, inconsequential noises that happen naturally: an audience member sniffling, the tiny murmurs of butts squirming in seats, the accidental sighs of discomfort from the second chair violist. But the piece’s larger purpose might just be to get an audience to sit quietly in a concert hall. “4:33” is really a group meditation. I would challenge you to sit through the performance of “4:33” at the link below. Listen to what goes through your head, then let it go and listen some more. It is not easy. We have a natural inclination to want to fill space with something. As songwriters watching all of those gifted musicians sitting there doing nothing, we might begin composing melodies of our own, shaping bits of subconscious detritae into music for them to perform. Or drift into the realm of grocery lists and New Year’s resolutions. The point of the exercise is not to necessarily produce anything, but just to listen, to listen to what is in our heads that is not yet fully formed. Think of a raging bonfire on a December night, flames shooting three feet into the air, wood crackling, smoke and bits of burnt stuff flying into the sky: This is your brain in the middle of a day of errands, emails, tweets, transactions and phone calls. And now picture a pile of glowing embers in a living room fireplace, seething with red-hot energy, quiet and then… pop. One solitary spark shoots up for a moment against the soot-blackened bricks, and you see it, perfectly clear. This is your brain when you have taken the time to be quiet, aware. There are a million sparks flying in our heads, hearts, spirits and souls at any given point in the day. But we have to give ourselves the space to see them. As songwriters, it is essential that we find a balance between absorbing fresh stimulae and allowing what we have already experienced to simmer and pop into something that will become our newest take on the world around us, something resembling an original thought. So don’t be afraid of silence. If you listen, it could lead you into more music inside of you than you ever knew existed. Link for “4:33”

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