SSG Year 7 Week 1 - Nick - It's not a love song

Okay, I now have my first official Year 7 entry into my "wish I'd written that (those) line (s)" notebook:
Running from loneliness
Sitting next to you
You change the radio
to have something to do

I think you've got the opposite situation from Kathy, sir. The first part of the first verse is priceless and the end of it works well, too. But the two stanzas in between, while good, seem a lot more passive. They just don't have the urgency of the opening and closing stanzas. So, a suggestion off the top of my head (which, of course, is the first official Year 7 invitation to make your favorite bald joke here):

Running from loneliness
Sitting next to you
You change the radio
to have something to do

The words we pass between us
My catalogue of jokes and lies
I hold them up to mask my feelings
When I look into your eyes

My smile running on empty
I don't have a single clue
Of which word or thought or feeling
To say or give to to you

Rehearsed a million times
The lines I've memorized
All forgotten, the moment
I look into your eyes

I know that this isn't a great suggestion, but again, I think the idea is to get the middle two stanzas to at least live up to the first and forth ones. I could say they'll never match the first one, but then you'll go and prove me wrong. I've seen this show before, you know :wink:

Looking forward to the MP3.

Peace

That's funny. I was going to suggest changing the first lines in verse 1 and 3

Instead of "Running from loneliness" (because the rest of the song doesn't support that feeling) to
"Driving through the (cold) rain" simply because it sets and matches the imagery in the first verse.

Then because the change of "Running" theme, the third verse would be changed from "Running on empty" to
"Driving us to our end" to match the "Driving theme"

And then
The words we're speaking The words I'm speaking?
They might as well be lies
to camouflage, my feelings To hide my real feelings
When I look into your eyes

Thank you David. I shouldn't have changed it so quickly so others could see what you were talking about, but I liked it so much I couldn't control myself.

Thanks Ken, Maybe I can keep the movement theme going in the later verses. I did originally, but I didn't like the way it sounded. I tend to write big lines and simplify. It's a phase I'm going through. I don't think I can do a driving theme though unless I was really clever about it. It has been done a lot.

It really should be "we're" because women aren't half as dense as men and she would know. So she'd be guilty too. And yes, it is to hide my real feelings, but I wanted to use some imagery to say that. Camouflage was wrong.

The suggstion I have isn't really about the lyrics, for once - rather, it's more about the dynamic of the song. First thought was, wow, there's a lot of this - so I picked a guitar up and strummed some chords (G Em C and D) along with the lyrics. Clocked in around 3:40ish, so not too long. What did strike me was it still seems to take a while to reach the chorus, then the same again to the second and final chorus. I don't actually know what kind of variation you've got in mind for the chorus - changing the chords around, or a subtle alteration of melody - but my suggestion would be:

Keep it at four verses until the first chorus - then only use the first half of the chorus. Another two verses, then repeat that first (half)chorus. Two more verses, THEN use both halves of the chorus, dropping the tempo for the second half and maybe almost whispering for dramatic effect.

Something along these lines......

Running from loneliness
Sitting next to you
You change the radio
to have something to do

The words we're speaking
They might as well be lies
to camouflage, my feelings
When I look into your eyes

Running on empty
The ride is almost through
The plan spins round my head
Of what to say to you

Rehearsed a million times
The lines I've memorized
All forgotten, the moment
I look into your eyes

Chrorus:
It's not a love song
It just turned out that way
I'm only singing this
To say what I can't say

I watched you leaving
I can't say please don't go
I stood there wishing
For what I knew I'll never know

If I came to see you
The one who steals my dreams
If I said, I love you,
Would you know what I mean?

Chrorus:
It's not a love song
It just turned out that way
I'm only singing this
To say what I can't say

I see the skyline
through the morning glare
do you still want me,
are you still waiting there?

and then I hear your voice
know what I have to do
I have no choice
but to be with you

Chorus:
It's not a love song
It just turned out that way
I'm only singing this
To say what I can't say

It's not a love song
That you heard me play
It's only words that you'll never hear
Any other way

That way, you'd build up the tension until you reached the chorus for the first time, then it'd coast along to the second chorus, build up again to the third chorus and hit the listener hard with the second part of the chorus - dramatic impact, like I said.

There are a couple of little things lyrically that struck me....

"I watched you leaving
I can't say please don't go
I stood there wishing
For what I knew I'll never know"

Looks like your tenses are a little confused - I watched (past) I can't (present) I stood (back to the past) - it seems as if the second of those should be "I couldn't" but the way I was phrasing it, it had a horrible effect on the metre - threw the whole of the rest of the line off so all the wrong words were emphasised. It can fit, but it's tricky to phrase it just right. Maybe if you set the whole verse in the present?

"As I watch you leaving
I can't say please don't go
I stand here wishing
For what I knew I'll never know"

The other thing I'm not keen on - and this may just be a personal thing with me, I don't think I've ever used the words "I love you" in a song - is the third line of this verse....

If I came to see you
The one who steals my dreams
If I said, I love you,
Would you know what I mean?

There's a nice underlying subtlety to the whole song, "If I said I love you" seems too straight-forward to me, the narrator's trying to avoid those words for most of the song, but just blurts them out here.....the whole point of the song is that he's writing a love song because he's scared of saying those three little words! ("I'm only singing this to say what I can't say" and "It's only words that you'll never hear any other way" for example.)

I did find this very easy to fit music to, in the style you've already mentioned - and if you hadn't already guessed it, I'm a sucker for those old 50's style dramatic/romantic ballads. This fits neatly into that genre, I know because it's running through my head!

:D :D :D

Vic

Good points, Vic.

Wow I missed this place.

Stealing your ideas and claiming as my own now... :D

I have to go with Vic on the structure. you have four verses, then chorus, then five verses, then chorus, then one verse, then chorus... I was a little lost. Unlike Vic though, I think I get the I love you part (and I usually don't use the phrase in songs or in life much, for that matter). If this is someone that NEVER says it, would it make a difference if he did? Would that be the thing to break the ice?? I may be completely off target, but that was my take.

Right, that is it exactly. If I said it, would it matter? Would you notice? Would you know all that it really means?

I did notice I left out a chorus in print. I fixed it. It is long though. I'll probably combine the middle verses and remove a chorus at some point. I've got to take the kids to dinner now though. It's hard to record when they are whining at me.

You can hear the song on my Soundclick page

http://www.soundclick.com/nfshakespeare

Well, it seems that I missed all the action, but I certainly like the result as it now stands. Great theme, and strongly executed.

On reading the title, the 10cc song "I'm Not in Love..." started playing in my head, unbidden. That's the one where the singer insists that he's not in love, but all the words suggest the opposite. This can be a bit of a nuisance when you look at a new song, as you can subconsciously start trying to force it down a path that it probably isn't going to be taking.... :?

So, after humming a few bars of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to reboot the brain...

Yep, that's a beauty. One of my clumsy theories on writing songs revolves round the notion that the average listener simply won't hear all the words neatly laid out the way they were on the page and will often have to either 'get' or 'miss' the meaning based on the bits that they do hear. So I try covering up lines or verses randomly and see to what degree it all falls apart if they miss a crucial part. If so, I'd either try and restate it elsewhere, or else take special care to emphasize it clearly when sung. This song passes with flying colours - lots of evocative phrases and verses all supporting the main theme. If the listener does get it all, then it works as an unfolding story, but if they didn't pick up on every detail or image, then they'd still get a good emotional picture from a bunch of more abstract brushstrokes... (That probably sounds like complete bollocks, put like that, but I've seen it again and again in hit songs I've tried to pull apart - a key phrase or two can define the whole song.)

I especially liked "You change the radio to have something to do"... Sometimes a phrase can be worth a thousand pictures, :wink: and that's a beauty...

Looking forward to hearing it, even if it doesn't make it up by Sunday night.

WooHoo! Looks like it got posted while I was typing. Off to listen.... :)

Cheers,

Chris

WoW Nick

That was a really good listen. I can hear the Orbison influence
but I'm also hearing a lot of his fellow Wilbury Jeff Lynne on the
chorus.

As Vic said, The first "I wish I had written that" of Year 7

Must go download to MP3 player now.

John

Thank you very much, Chris. Thanks John. And thank you all.

I was just trying to put something together to show you what I was thinking. It came out much better than I thought it would. Thanks everyone for the suggestions and changes. I was thinking of it as a throw away. Goes to show you what I know. With a little work I think I could perform this one somewhere.

Here is a perfect example of needing to put your lyrics to music. It didn't sound that long to me on paper. It is a bit too long in performance.

:mrgreen:

Now listened to and sung along with...

Within minutes of it first hitting the internet, and it's already being sung in Australia! There's something slightly freaky about that... but I really enjoyed listening and singing along. Catchy and effective.

Always interesting to match the written words with what actually gets sung too. A few bits of shrapnel can now be deleted from the lyric sheet on the basis that the voice always gets the final editing power. But there was one spot where the lyrics say:

"I can't say please don't go "

But, as far as I could hear, you left the "can't" out and sang "I say please don't go"... I'm guessing that wasn't a deliberate change of heart. :)

Cheers,

Chris

PS. Another great song that touches on a slightly similar theme is Jim Croce's:

"Cause every time I try to tell you, the words just came out wrong
So I'll have to say I love you, in a song"

Geez, the old brain is really dredging back through some dusty neurons today... that one hasn't fired up for years...

Terrific, Nick. Pleasing to the ear and mind.
I can dance to it, sing along with it, tap my foot to it, rock in my patio recliner to it . . .
I was writing my novel to it . . . great background song for working.
Creation well done.

I liked it, too. Didn't get 50's slush, though - reminded me more of 70's singer/songwriter laid-back West-Coast country-rock. Whew, that covers a lot of genres - more specifically, I got a kind of Jackson Browne vibe from this. Just the overall feel, you know?

The feelin's good....

BTW, had a chuckle when that finished and Continental Cowboy started (that's my subtle way of telling you, yes I DID listen to the whole song....) - matching avatar and photograph!

:D :D :D

Vic

That is very weird to think it's being sung down under. Isn't the internet amazing? Good catch, I did mean can't and not can. I'm not sure if I want to change it now though.

And thanks for the kind words Ken.

I forgot to provide the key.

It goes:


A AMaj7 A
Running from loneliness
F#m F#7 F#m
Sitting next to you
D Dmaj7 D
You change the radio
E E9 E
to have something to do

A AMaj7 A
The words that pass between us
F#m F#7 F#m
A wall of jokes and lies
D Dmaj7 D
I build to hide my feelings
E E9 E
When I look into your eyes

Chorus:
F#m D
It's not a love song
A E
It just turned out that way
F#m D
I'm only singing this
A E
To say what I can't say
F#m D
It's not a love song
A E
That you heard me play
F#m D
It's only words that you'll never hear
A E
Any other way