Sunday, August 7, 2011

Song Alert: Nothing to do with you

A Summer Night. Credit: Keru
Here's the "rough draft recording," as I've been calling them: Nothing to do with you. (It's also in the SoundCloud widget above.)

To quote my favorite New Yorker cartoon: "This song is very difficult for me, emotionally. Plus, the chords are hard." No no no, it's not true. The chords are actually very easy. A simple harmonic ostinato.

This is the song that I wrestled with all through July (that didst bring a most grievous spirit upon me). Last Thursday I sat myself down at 11 AM and decided I was not going to shower, leave the apartment, or focus my attention on anything else whatsoever until it was finished. It was pretty grueling. While the hook came to me in a flash at the beginning of July, I'd tried many times to hash out the verses but I wasn't getting any ideas. Every line was a real struggle. But finally, by about 4 PM, all holes had been filled and I decided it was Good Enough.

Which means, as it does with all of my songs when I've just finished them, that I thought it was terrible and boring and I hated it. I sent off the lyrics to a trusted songwriter friend who cheered with me for finishing it (THANK YOU, DANI!). A composer friend added, with French accent, "Today, you've just given birth. You don't know yet whether this one will go off to college. Just, you know, give it some time and let it grow."

Half a bottle of Grenache on Friday night, and what-the-hell-it's-beautiful-let's-record-it. It's a song about love, God, sex, on a backdrop of cicadas, crickets, katydids, frogs, and other insects ... all the good stuff. Notice! It becomes gently NSFW in the fourth verse.

1 comment:

  1. Ugh. It should be "lying on a blanket" not "laying on a blanket." Oh well, this is why I called it a rough draft. xxx

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