Just write it down

I am in awe of good lyricists. Those who strive to push the boundaries of the Pop song. Sure, "Baby, I luurve you" has it's place in the Tin Pan Alley pantheon, but, the songwriters who manage to comment on the social, political or otherwise element of life, are the one's that I really admire. I could not write a political song, even if I changed my name to "Ernesto Che" and read nothing, but, Karl Marx for a year. I would still end up churning out songs about the fraility of the human condition (namely my own...) because that's where I tend to dwell. Anything else would seem forced and end up sounding like Ric Mayall's "Pollution" skit from "The Young One's".

The great thing about these songwriters is that their lyrics often lead you on to a voyage of discovery. Adam Levy from Honeydogs has always been a fave writer of mine, with a decidedly American take on Costello-esque themes and style. Their 2004 release, 10,000 Years is almost the perfect example of the marriage between classic melodies and thought-provoking lyrics. One among many, great lines on that record is "Time stops everything happening at once". Now given, that is a quote by John Archibald Wheeler, but, it just takes you off in another direction when you start to google that line. Great songwriting should do that and, do it in spades. One of Adam's own song titles is "Dead Stars" and contains the line "By the light of Dead Stars, she learned a secret". Now, I loved this line, not just for it's fantastic imagery, but, because I had written a song, called Smile , with a very similar theme back in 1999. My line was "Wish on every star, like their dead light could ever see you through". And, for that fleeting moment, I felt like I was in the inner circle.

On a not entirely unrelated thread; I once had a very heated argument with an Astronomer in Australia, Ayers Rock to be precise, with me stating that the Stars we could see were already dead and him stating the opposite. In the end, I wanted to shove his telescope "Where the Moon don't shine", but, that's another story, altogether.......