Facts Versus Feelings

I have yet to write the Song of the Week, and I'm hoping to find inspiration on the road. I'm a fan of audio books, especially if I'm going to be driving alone, it really helps pass the time. Tomorrow I will be listening to Neil Gaiman's 'Graveyard Stories' as I make the six hour trek from Shelbyville to Cabot, Arkansas.

My goal for this week will be to focus on the story. As a rule I don't write songs that tell a very specific story overtly, quite opposite to writing a song for country music. In country music it is completely okay to construct a song in which it is very transparent as to what it is about.

The problem with writing so transparently, is that it narrows the audience that can relate to the story. A song about an angry female destroying her cheating boyfriend's truck, for instance, is more beloved by a scorned female than by a male who has never cheated or been cheated on. So for him, the story does nothing for him, though the music he might still appreciate.

I write with a theme or a story in mind, but I try to keep it vague enough that each person that listens can attach their own thoughts as to what the song means. Thus the song means something very personal to them. It tells not only my story, but their own. I find it is easiest to achieve this by focusing on how something feels after it happens, as opposed to what has happened itself. I will now coin this style of songwriting as 'Emotional Aftermath' writing, and you can quote me on that (or create a wiki about it).

A good mainstream example of this theory in work is 'Brick' by Ben Folds' Five. The song was indeed written about the experience of undergoing an abortion, but the song focuses more on how it feels to go through this than the process itself. So if you didn't know what the song was about, there are lines in the song like 'feeling more alone than I ever have before' that you might relate to though you may have never personally experienced an abortion.

The second nature to writing like this is it gives a song a second life. If you already like a song, and there are some intriguing elements to the song that make you guess what it is about, then when you find out from the artist what it is about then it makes you enjoy the song even more. Listening to the song now is as interesting as watching 'The Sixth Sense' a second time; all of the clues were there but the artist cleverly disguised them from you.

So onward with this quest, hopefully by Friday I will have a new song on the blog!