Songs Change Lives

“An idea means something entirely different to a songwriter than it might to a novelist, journalist, or screenwriter.  Songwriters work, for the most part, in a milieu that might be described as technological haiku… We must accomplish our aims and tell our entire story in a time frame of about three minutes… Every word, every note must count.”

                             Jimmy Webb/Tunesmith, 1998

You transfer your late night cocktail napkin scribbles onto the fresh blank page with conviction.  You have an incredible first verse.  Now what?

That first verse will taunt you. Can you write a second, or even a third, as good as the first? By the twenty-third draft- when the dust settles and the ink dries- do you have something that's even any good? 

A great song is that hard to write. You feverishly record every idea into a little notebook, hoping one will bear fruit, that one idea will ripen sweetly into a great song. In that respect, it’s not unlike playing the lottery.  In fact, you might get luckier playing Megamillions than writing a hit song.

If anyone knows the agony (and the ecstasy) of songwriting, it’s Jimmy Webb. His book Tunesmith is compelling from start to finish. It’s in the pantheon of “must read” songwriting process books, full of wisdom, humor, and wonderful anecdotes, if songwriting is your bag.

Songwriting is tangible, yet somehow mysterious.  It’s an enthralling mystical space where words meet melody – that space can transform, upend, and forever change you. It’s a space you rarely visit in current popular culture.

Great songs weather time and cultural demise. Audiences still resonate with the best music ever written.  Stardust by Hoagy Carmichael and Mitchell Parish, composed in 1927, still wows:  “And now the purple dusk of twilight time steals across the meadows of my heart. Up into the sky the little stars climb always reminding me that we’re apart…”

Is there a better example of that mystical space?  I get goosebumps!  Melodies and lyrics this good are soul affirming, and always relevant.  Stardust will remain an epic, despite contemporary tampering, sampling, and over the top- 21^stcentury-melisma heavy-carnivalesque-sideshow-worthy - vocal renditions.  It will stand up to anything, even bad taste!  Great songs have this power to endure.  That said, I'm not certain I'd like to hear All The Things You Are arranged for bagpipe and theremin. Stranger things have happened to the Great American song book - mostly in elevators.  But however punishing the treatment, Kern’s chestnut will always emerge shining and victorious.  Like Gloria Gaynor, it too, will survive.

I recently gave a presentation on my “textual lineage” to a group of writers and teachers.  Textual lineage, a term coined by author Alfred Tatum, refers to how literacy, oral tradition, music, cultural values, family, passions, life experiences, etc. shape our lives. I can probably recall every song lyric, every melody, embroidered and woven throughout the multi-textured fabric that has become my life. 

This immense tapestry contains my musical lineage, my song dreams. All the songs I’ve ever heard, sung, or written are sewn into this diverse patchwork.  Let’s randomly examine this lyric by Tom Waits:

Broken Bicycles

“Broken bicycles, old busted chains

with rusted handle bars, out in the rain

Somebody must have an orphanage for

all these things that nobody wants any more

September’s reminding July

It’s time to be saying goodbye

Summer is gone,

our love will remain

like old broken bicycles out in the rain

*   *   *   *   *

Broken bicycles, don’t tell my folks

There’s all those playing cards

pinned to the spokes

Laid down like skeletons

out on the lawn

The wheels won’t turn

when the other has gone

The seasons can turn on a dime

Somehow I forget every time

For the things that you’ve given me

Will always stay

broken,

but I will never

Throw them away”

Words/Music by Tom Waits

Fifth Floor Music/1982

The first time I heard this slow-to-mid-tempo waltz. I was sitting in my car in front of Starbuck's. The imagery of broken bicycles tarnishing in the rain, a damaged relationship in permanent disrepair, in parts rusting all over the lawn, dysfunction… Wow!  Through the crags in Tom’s voice, like old tree bark you want to run your hands over to feel every ridge, every knot, you are transported to his song world. This song is a departure from chronicles of washed up alcoholics on a bender, hopelessly hunkering in the pre-dawn hours, clutching empty scotch bottles proudly like trophies, hookers, sad eyes, a blue dress, red shoes, sinister drugstore lighting, a seedy urban societal underbelly – familiar themes for Waits.  What a master!  Waits’ depictions are theatrical and riveting. His songs are contemporary film noir.  Broken Bicycles is still haunting, thirty years later.

On another corner of my tapestry I find Guess Who I Saw Today, a song I’ve associated with Carmen McRae, though the great Nancy Wilson also recorded it.  Here’s the chorus without the 16-bar verse (do people even know what “verses” are anymore?):

Guess Who I Saw Today

Guess who I saw today my dear

I went in town to shop around for

Something new

And thought I’d stop and have a bite

When I was through

I looked around for someplace near

And it had occurred to me where I

had parked the car

I’d seen a most attractive French café

and bar

Guess who I saw today my dear

The waiter showed me to a dark

secluded corner

and when my eyes became accustomed

to the gloom

I saw two people at the bar who were

so much in love

that even I could spot it clear across the room

Guess who I saw today my dear

I’ve never been so shocked before

I headed blindly for the door

They didn’t see me passing through

Guess who I saw today

I saw you

Words and Music: Grand/Boyd

1952 Warner Chappell

It’s another drama, unfolding completely in the span of three to four minutes. No rich imagery. No flowery poetics. No clever rhyme scheme. But a very sophisticated treatment of a husband caught cheating. The lyricist builds anticipation up so well, that by the time the other shoe drops, the wife has totally lost it.  I can see the unsuspecting husband walk into the house. The wife fixes him a drink, perhaps a dry martini.  Then she lays bare the painful truth. Utterly brilliant.

The empty page beckons. It dares you to find the right words, the evocative words, the ones with the power and poignancy to change lives.  For lyrics and melodies do change lives.  As a singer, as a writer, as a human being who loves, feels, and breathes, songs have forever changed me.  How have they changed you?


I welcome your comments.  What songs have shaped your musical lineage?