y12w26

Hi

There's a very interesting story going on here, but it's a little disjointed. That may be part of the overall narrative, but it's hard to tell if it's deliberate or simply a confusion of lines.

One way to make things smoother might be to combine the first two verses before the first chorus. That way the second verse isn't totally isolated as a backstory set-up:
It was on a midnight moonlit road
I saw her arm next to the tree
My bare foot hit the brake and I slowed
It was two years to the day I was free

I'd taken the fall as the middle man
I never spoke a soul’s name
They caught me in the Econoline van
Since prison I haven’t been the same

C:The sins of my past were on my trail
I prayed not for her but for me
No matter what I wasn’t going back to jail
I remained on bended knee

In what's now the third verse, switching out the first and third lines could make more narrative sense:
The moonlight revealed blood on her hair
Her skirt was torn and frayed
I almost kept on going and left her there
I had a thought I was being played

It's a great start and I'm looking forward to more. Any ideas as to the music yet?

Peace

There's a very interesting story going on here
+1

Very interesting. It sets up an intense moment, if I am understanding it correctly, an excon finds a murder victim as a police car is arriving and the singer is wondering if he will be accused of the crime.

It reminds me a bit of a Bob Dylan line/idea from Hurricane
In Patterson that's just the way things go
If you're black you might as well not shown up on the street
'Less you wanna draw the heat.
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobdylan/hurricane.html

....also in the movie "The Greatest" where a con on the run is caught after hitting a car parked in the middle of the road; accidentally killing one of the main characters as a key part of the story and being put back in prison.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greatest_(2009_film)

....if I got that right, this vs, consider staying in the moment and leaving the tension high, don't give away the idea that the real murder committed suicide....

I saw the lights coming around the bend
Flashbacks of misdemeanors and crimes
Her murderer ended up finding his end
He took his own life before his scheduled time

...the flash back is a good devise here, but consider reworking the crime a bit clearer in how it might be perceived as setting him up to be the murder of the woman on the side of the road.

Thanks for sharing.

James

Hey thanks again for the suggestions. I seem to have a consistent problem with my attempts at writing lyrics so far. I like lyrics that have a lot of "gaps" or room for interpretation, so I try to write some of these. However, it seems that my lyrics lack clarity. Any suggestions for balancing these two seemingly contradictory desires?

Thanks again. Still haven't put music to these lyrics yet, but work will die down a lot after the next few weeks and hopefully then. Thanks a lot, I do appreciate it.

You definitely had the right interpretation of the lyrics by the way...