Note #28: How a Song is Born
How some songs come quickly, mysteriously, fully formed
I have an idea for a writing project, which would be to write about specific songs of mine, and how they came into being, even going so far as to conceive of the 100 songs project in which I would write about, well, 100 (of my own) songs. Now, I haven’t yet written or documented 100 songs, but I believe I will get there (how is that for ambition — or hubris?). In reality, it’s difficult for me to tap into the original inspiration and discuss songs once I’ve established them. Once I’ve written them, recorded them, and played them dozens of times, they become a thing. So I move on. At some point, inevitably, I am on to the next song. It’s not exactly that I get bored. What happens is that I am already thinking about other songs, and the once shiny object of the previously new song becomes one more piece in a whole, and though it may not lose its luster, its creative origin does lose its interest for me.
In fact, it really is intriguing how songs come to be. What I find most compelling is going back to listen to the inchoate song that I played onto my phone (either into a sound file, or a video), and then, within a few days or weeks later, recognizing how it had become a full-fledged production. It never fails to surprise me how I went from A to at least G, if not Z.
The best songs are the ones that come out of nowhere, land like an alien spacecraft and take up residence in my psyche. Too many mixed metaphors, I know.
Take The Kingdom as an example. I came up with this song at 7:30 in the morning of February 5th, in a weekend of unfettered days to play and record music. It came to me suddenly, fully-formed, inspired. In a mere five minutes. It must have been derived somewhat from Unbroken, which I had been recording and was playing a lot, and, because I was using the capo on the third fret. But then I just hit upon the chords, the rhythm and a strumming style, and the lyrics suggested by my usual mumbling, sometimes making full sense words, over the music. I knew enough to turn on my phone video and document it, otherwise, it would have been lost completely forever (I am sure). I knew it was hot, I knew it was going to be something the moment I played it. Where it actually came from, I have no idea.
This has happened enough times that I know to document it. When I wrote The Way Back, it was the same thing. I knew I had chords and a melody coming together–-it hit me like a shock, how complete it was-–and, even though I was interrupted while documenting it, I kept going. Had I stopped to answer the person talking to me, I might have lost the song. But that original recording, I can hear myself answering someone in my house, “Yeah, okay,” I say, as I keep playing through, knowing I had a song. It kicked off the whole songwriting thing for me two years ago.
The Kingdom (in this video, the song starts at 3:42) is one of my easiest songs, in a sense, but it also comes off well when I play it live. It’s one of my favorites (And a favorite of one of the hosts at an open mic I regularly attend). It’s dark, mysterious, with lyrics that are vaguely sinister — though not autobiographical.
The odd thing is that I have dozens of fits and starts that have never made it to a finished song. I suppose I can go back and work them out. What I often find is that the song that I do eventually land on is derived from those fits and starts. With The Kingdom, it was instantaneous. The song was like the proverbial sculpture in the piece of marble. In fact, so many songs come from meager, almost humble beginnings, and somehow it hits me when I am not trying.
Another element that leads to song writing gold is playing early in the morning. So often if the first thing I play is not one of my usual songs, I seem to be tuned into hearing something new. If I’m messing around with chords, I can usually create a melody and some structure, and a song is there. This morning, for example, I played a set of chords I came up with on the previous morning, and I believe it’s another song (Rage is a Window, working title). No fleshed out lyrics, but it seems to me vaguely reminiscent of R.E.M.’s Moral Kiosk, and is otherwise documented and ready to pick up when I have the time.
Is a song better when it comes so fully formed so quickly? I have spent a lot of time on song structure for certain songs, and less than an hour on others. I occasionally tweak and re-tweak a structure until I’ve nailed it, or it becomes something I’m satisfied with; I can go through five or six drafts just to get the pieces working. I tend to like the fast and dirty song arrivals best. They’re like the pick of the litter. There is something in the process that makes them stick. Of the more elaborate, carefully structured songs that I might have spent days on (Believers, for example), they are less compelling to me now. Perhaps there were lessons learned in that process that simply came to bear in the fast and dirty songs. Who knows.
