"Sing into my mouth"

There's a lyric I love from the talking heads song 'This Must Be the Place':

"Sing into my mouth"



It's a funny line and a bit of a gross idea if you take it literally, someone else singing directly into your mouth.

My thoughts on it were that he's imaging the singing coming to him rather than from him, as if his own words are feeding him, his own creativity sustaining him.

With that and lots of other things in mind here are some lyrics I'm working on at the moment. No recording of them yet because they don't have a melody yet:



Waiting for it all to fall into place
Waiting
For when the words fall into my mouth
Waiting
For ripeness to reach it's peak
The stem will break
But not before
The falling fruit
It's sweetness take
From branch to fruit
From fruit to me
From me to you

Oh Lord Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

I'm reading a biography of Nina Simone (a brilliant page turner of a book and a brilliant page turner of a life). The highs and lows of Nina Simone's life are enthralling. One second she's got a hit in the charts but she's broke working as a maid, the next she's a rich socialite in Liberia with more suitors than she can keep track of, the next she's an old crank living in France sneaking into her neighbors swimming pools to go skinny dipping and getting her gun out to shoot at their kids when they make too much noise. It's hard to keep track, but David Brun-Lambert (the biographer) does it well. He set himself a hard task of trying to decipher fact from rumor and at the same time he gives great snapshots of the civil rights movement in America. But I don't want to talk about her life, I want to talk about her music.

The first album I ever bought was a Nina Simone compilation entitled 'The After Hours' (the first single I ever bought was Dustin the Turkey' *facepalm*). It's a very odd collection of tracks. A mix of studio recordings of full band arrangements with strings, and live recordings, some completely unaccompanied A cappella. Now that I'm reading her biography I'm realising it's probably a pirate album. The bad quality live recording probably done without her consent. Of course I'm not for piracy and I'd be much happier knowing she earned what she was due from these recording, but I'm still glad they exist.

I bought this album (when I was ten or eleven) because at home we had a Nina Simone CD of her hits that we listened to a lot. My Baby Just Cares For Me, Love me or Leave Me, See Line Woman...but when I got this CD home I was pretty shocked.


Instead of:





I got:





I was hooked. Nina (I feel we should be on first name terms, I have no justification other than ego) can deliver a lyric. In the live recordings you can feel the tension in the crowd. She can draw out a word for miles, waiting till the very last second to resolve, like when she sings 'Don't............look for me'. She has this raw intensity in her voice that she can use to absolutely hypnotise a crowd.

But somehow I get the feeling that now days she's probably better known for Coke and diet yohgurt adds. I get the feeling she's known for happy go lucky pop, gospel anthems when, in my completely personal and subjective opinion, this is not the area she shines in at all. Her pop gospel tunes might be great but they are nowhere near the genius of tunes like 'Four Women' or 'Images of a wayward soul'.






Misunderstood? Probably.

I'm working on a few new tunes at the moment so I thought I'd post up some of the works in progress as I go along. Bits and pieces: a nose here, an arm there that will eventually become songs with their own identities and personalities. They'll grow up and ignore me someday, but for now they're all mine, live under my roof and obey my rules....right that's the end of comparing songs to children, or pets, or golems.

One of the fragments of a song that I'm working on at the moment is called 'Hand Holding' (or at least it is for now).

So here's a rough, home recorded sketch of some of the lyrics:

Hand holding, remolding our fingerprints, histories.
Find me here.

Hips joining, unfolding the romance of alchemy.
Find me here.

Often when I'm working on lyrics I'll read up about a certain subject a bit and even though everything I read about doesn't necessarily end up in the song (not directly anyway) I think it still influence it. So here are some interesting things I've read lately that I've got filed in my brain under 'Hand Holding':


From the Wikipedia entry on Polycephaly:

"A live two headed turtle named Janus can be seen at the Natural History Museum in Geneva Switzerland"

'There is some speculation that the inbreeding of snakes in captivity increases the chances of a two-headed birth...snake heads may attack and even attempt to swallow each other"

"With humans, dicephalic conjoined twins as Abigail and Brittany Hensel are considered "twins", i.e., two individuals....On the other hand, Syafitri, born 2006 in Indonesia, were given one name by their parents because they only had one heart."


And of course I can't do anything these days without tying it in with my current obsession (Frida Kahlo's self portraits) so I file this under Hand Holding too:

Self Portrait as a Tehuana
(Diego on My Mind)

I went for a gander to my local library and came back with three goodies. I've just started reading the first, entitled 'Crap Lyrics', and so far my reaction has been like those videos you see on youtube of babies laughing uncontrollably*.

Anyway in the introduction there's a quote from Noel Gallagher:

" I get the odd night when I'm halfway through 'Don't look back in anger' when I say to myself 'I still don't know what these words mean! I'm thinking what the...'Stand up beside the fireplace! Why?
And all these kids will be singing it at the top of their voices with all their arms around each other and I kind of feel like stopping and going 'Look can someone help me out here? Am I missing something?"


Why did he pick that lyric to single out as nonsense? Of all the Oasis lyrics that make absolutely no sense whatsoever like: "Slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball"

'Stand up beside the fireplace' is at least a fully formed sentence. It's even got a sense of gravitas to it, like maybe you'd stand beside the fireplace to give an important speech or if you wanted to be taken seriously but when would you ever be "Caught beneath the landslide in a champagne super nova in the sky".


*except I'm not a baby obviously.

How long does it take to write a song? Apparently forever. I was just reading over an old blog post* I wrote more than a year ago about a song I was writing at the time. I'd written a chorus but the verses went a bit haywire so I shelved it. Then recently I started again and so now more than a year later I think it's finished. More than a year for 16 lines of lyrics, 12 chords, two verses and a chorus.

Something so precious
Hurts to even think about it
Something so delicate
You're scared to say it's name
It's your private little shame you carry with you
Like a dead mouse in your pocket

You leave me gifts
Like the dead song birds my cat leaves at my window
You leave them under my pillow

'It could decorate my life'
'It won't satisfy you'
'Oh but I'll wear it like an earring,
Frida Kahlo's delight. Oh so fine'
'It's just a trinket on a line'

*Here's the original blog post from a year ago:

I was writing a song (working title: 'a conversation between two fish watching a spinner go by'...I'll come up with something catchier eventually) and I think I may have inadvertently written something that makes absolutely no sense, probably not that uncommon for singer songwriters. I thought that I'd heard a myth once that pirates wore earrings so that if they died at sea they could pay the god of the sea to allow them into heaven. I assumed the sea god was neptune but I could be a few thousand years off on that one. I've been googling it for a while now and it turns out I must've made that up out of thin air because apparently pirates wore earrings to a)improve their hearing(!?) b) ward off seasickness (!?!) c) pay for their funeral should they die at sea. So here's a nonsensical verse for

'A Conversation Between Two Fish Watching a Spinner Go By':

"It could decorate my life"

"Would that satisfy you? You'd wear it like an earring"

"Oh I'd be Neptune's delight"

"Close to divine, all for a trinket on a line"

I've gotten into reading biographies lately, especially musicians biographies so I thought I'd share a few of my favourites, got any recommendations let me know.




Kate Bush Under the Ivy.
There's a hell of a lot more to Kate Bush than Wuthering Heights but if you didn't already know that then this book might not be for you. A great peek into her recording process and her influences. Read this with your computer open in front of you so that you can look up every song and video as you read about it for the complete Kate Bush experience.


Louis Armstrong An Extraordinary Life
This one was recommended to me by a tutor in college during a lecture but don't let that put you off, even if you couldn't care less about jazz and you've never heard of Louis Armstrong (well that's pretty unlikely to be fair) this is still a great read and a really interesting look at American cultural history and the birth of Network Broadcasting. Also Louis Armstrong is as entertaining to read about as he is to listen to, he's a godam hilarious character.





Tom Waits Innocent When You Dream
Ok technically not a biography this is a collection of interviews with Tom Waits all done by the same reporter* spread out over a few years. I read this forever ago and I can't remember anything about it except that I loved it......sure I should review books for a living with those kinds of amazing reporting skills.


*just updating because I realised I was wrong, the interviews weren't all done by the same reporter. Oops.

Usually when people ask me who my influences are I prattle off a list that goes something like: Joni Mitchell, Ani DiFranco, Tori Amos...etc. and it's not a lie BUT a big part of the reason I list those names is also because I know they are names people will recognise and relate to. The names I don't mention but which probably have just as much influence on my music are my peers. Dublin has a great music scene but it's not exactly huge, we might all like to think we're unique little butterflies but the reality is more like we're a bunch of tightly packed molecules bouncing back and forth off each other (and I'm not just talking musically...I couldn't help it that sentence was too aptly rife with innuendo to ignore).

So today I thought I'd take a break from talking about myself and instead ask someone else some questions for a change. Edel Meade is a Dublin based genre-spanning jazz vocalist and composer who I've had the pleasure of seeing perform a few times with her group the Swoo-Beh Project. She's got absolute stellar song writing and arranging skills and her gigs are literally inspirational (the word literally is often misused to mean the exact opposite, I'm not doing that here, last time I saw her sing I was literally inspired to go home and start writing a new tune). So here we go:




How do you feel about singing very personal lyrics? 'Sideways' is like eavesdropping on a really intimate conversation.

For me, it’s got to be real. With 'Sideways”, I just wanted to capture a beautiful moment and this song kind-of wrote itself. The act of composing is intimate anyway so when I was writing this song, I wasn’t thinking about who would be listening to it.

Similarly with ‘Love Lost’, it comes from a very personal experience but I believe music and real life are intertwined.
For me, music is life. When I’m singing ‘Lush Life’ (by Billy Strayhorn), for example, I might substitute the word “mush” for “shit” because I don’t use the word “mush” ever in conversation.

I guess my lyrics reflect on my life as a twenty-something year old female growing up in Dublin today. I’m aware of the fact that my days are numbered so I don’t have time for dishonesty. The world is saturated with forgettable melodies and uninspired lyrics. It doesn’t need anymore from me or anyone else but there will always be a place for truth and honesty. That’s what will engage a listener and draw someone in.

But not all my lyrics are personal. ‘Blue Fantasia’ is part real, part fantasy. The lyrics for the hook in ‘Eleven Eleven (Dream Machine)’ AKA ‘the radio song’ are deliberately lacking in depth to reflect the vast majority of “hits” on the radio. “Our love is here to stay, it’s gonna last forever. Will never go away”. The next line- “We tell you what to do and you do what we tell you. No matter if it’s true”, is the same catchy melody as before but “we” refers to the mass media telling us what to do, what we should look like, what products we can’t live without, the events we should attend etc etc because I think it’s easy to forget that we have a choice in the matter.





The first time I heard you do 'Eleven Eleven (Dream Machine)', it sounded like the excerpts, or samples, you took from the radio were thematically chosen, but then last time I heard you sing it I realised the excerpts must have been updated that day (because there was mention of the census). So tell us a bit about it? How did you decide which excerpts to use?

At the start of the tune, we’ll hear snippets from what’s on the radio at that particular moment. It could be anything at all from traditional Irish music on Raidió na Gaeltachta, to an ad promoting Plenty kitchen roll to the public service announcements. This is followed by a distorted guitar melody and general chaos inspired by Jimi Hendrix’ rendition of Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock in 1969, to draw your attention to how the mass media, in this case, the radio presents such mixed messages to an impressionable audience. It’s a metaphorical warning!

I update the news bulletins and songs every time we play this tune which means on the day of a performance, I’ll turn on the radio and hear random snippets of news stories, “hits”, jingles etc which I’ll record on Garageband in order to accurately transcribe them later.

We hear serious news bulletins telling us about for example, the death of a 25-year-old who was killed when a bomb exploded under his car but then when you turn the dial, you could hear Travie McCoy singing “I wanna be a billionaire so fricking bad” or Rihanna’s ‘S&M’. Then you might hear some DJ with his phony radio voice telling you to text to win tickets to Westlife’s Croke Part concert with support from Jedward and JLS as if that’s important! And then you turn the dial to hear an ad aimed at women telling them they will wake up feeling young, fresh and fabulous if they use the Daily Energiser range from Clarins... Who is to say that they are not fabulous already and why is youth portrayed as being better than middle-age? While the exact content varies every time we play this song, the overall result is the same. Let the listener beware!


When I heard it first I thought the excerpts were chosen to illustrate a feminist statement because the subtext of it all was so sexist, but I guess the the fact that they're chosen at random just goes to show how prevalent sexism is in the media. I'm completely with you on this one, it really bothers me sometimes when I hear the poison people are fed through radio, like the song you mentioned 'Billionaire' or my other big bugbear is 'Cooler Than Me'. You're bombarded with it constantly to the point where you can find yourself mindlessly singing along with some of the most unethical sentiments. Ok moving from the bad to the good: Who's your favourite lyricist?

I don’t have a singular favourite but I love Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Jill Scott and Erykah Badu.

It’s their honesty. Whether it’s related to matters of the heart or the hypocrisy of the times we live in, these lyricists stand out. Bob Dylan’s ‘Freewheelin’ album is a particular favourite and Joni’s got so many great songs. She just says it like it is. Jill Scott is a poet and her themes are pretty sexually explicit but it’s got to be like that if you’re talking about sex. We’ve come a long way since “I Want To Hold Your Hand”. Erykah Badu’s lyrics on her New Amerykah Part One and Part Two albums are genius. She addresses the current state of Black America, the hypocrisy of “the American dream” and I love how she never shies away from controversy and stays true to her beliefs. I am in awe of this lady as an artist.

I couldn't disagree more about Bob Dylan, I can't stand him but that discussion will take a whole other blog post. You've got me listening to Erykah Badu for the first time in years (my sister bought her first album 'Baduizm' when I was eleven and I was obsessed). Jill Scott's next on my list.








If you'd like to see Edel live, then you're in luck because she will be playing a number of gigs with her Swoo-Beh Project in June:

7th June 8PM LAUNCH NIGHT The Jazz Kitchen at The Grand Social Also playing: ZoiBand! €5 suggested contribution

19th June 5.30PM Zinc Club at Pacino's Cellar Bar €8/6

21st June 8PM The Jazz Kitchen at The Grand Social
Also playing: O.K.O.D.O.M.G. €5 suggested contribution

30th June 8.30PM National Concert Hall (Kevin Barry Room)
€10/8

Edel Meade - voice/radio/compositions
Chris Guilfoyle - guitar
Darragh O'Kelly - rhodes/piano
Andrew Csibi - double bass
Tommy Gray - drums

Also Edel is running a brand new Jazz night in Dublin starting on 7th June in The Grand Social (formerly Pravda), 35 Lower Liffey Street near the Ha'penny Bridge. It starts at 8pm and will feature the brightest emerging talent on the Irish jazz scene!

THE JAZZ KITCHEN.


In her own words:'The reason I'm doing this is because I see it is an absolute necessity for the jazz community and creative musicians in Ireland to have a designated venue where they can perform their music. We have a gorgeous and spacious room and two fantastic bands every Tuesday night and all for a fiver, so I really hope people will come out and support creative music and get involved. It's gonna be great!'

I had so much fun making my Venn Diagram the other day that I decided to make some more (click on the images to view them larger)

Here's one for

Mahalia Jackson

And here's one for
Damien Rice

(*I just want to point out that when I say 'sad' I mean unhappy, I'm not being all Irish and equating the perfectly reasonable emotion of sadness with being a loser)

And Lastly

Jay Z

I had a great idea for one for Jennifer Lopez but I got so sick of researching her lyrics that I gave up......the themes were 'I'm a normaller like you' (Jenny From the Block, I'm Real...) and 'The music in clubs is always too quiet' (play my favourite song, let's get loud...)

Venn Diagram

This blog has made me realise that all my songs fall into three categories. Ok so I haven't sat down and thought through every one of my tunes yet but I did make myself a quick little Venn Diagram* with a few of my tunes in there (click to view it larger if you don't have your reading glasses on)




Look at that big blank spot in the crossover section between pink and blue! Gotta sort that out. And the crossover between pink and green is getting a bit crowded, but how could it not be, emotional projection is such a good topic. I debated over where to put a few of them, like 'Light Fires' could also go in the green/blue crossover section (I'm sure someone who speaks math could tell me what the real name of the 'crossover section' is).



*I like Venn Diagrams. My first ever gig (playing my own material I mean) was a collaboration with Banbha Mc Cann called Venn Diagram in the Back Loft.

A song for a sunny Spring weekend when all the flowers are coming back to life.








I realise the dancing in that video is probably perpetuating peoples perception of jazz clubs being like this:






But they're not I swear, I wish they were. In fact certain Dublin venues have signs up that say no dancing! Audrey Hepburn would be ashamed of our prudishness.

Lots of people never listen to lyrics! Especially boys! I like to begin blog posts with wide sweeping, unresearched generalisations about large portions of the population and end the sentences with exclamation marks!

Listening to lyrics can be a bit of hinderance, it can stop you liking otherwise perfectly good music. First example: the jazz standard 'How High the Moon'. It has the worst lyrics of all time in the history of the world ever! A completely nonsensical ream of words that rhyme and are vaguely associated with romance. No narrative, no plot, no characters...the song makes no sense (and Ella Fitzgerald does it no favours when she scraps the lyrics and instead improvises her own, she managed somehow to make even less sense).

'Somewhere there's music
How faint the tune
Somewhere there's heaven
How high the moon
There is no moon above
When love is far away too
Till it comes true
That you love me as I love you'

...Say What!? Yes somewhere there is music, you are singing this song so music is right here so you are making music, do the lyrics mean to say 'I hear music when I see you' 'wherever you are there's music' 'falling in love makes me hear music'...I have no idea, and why is the tune faint? Is the narrator only a little bit in love, is that why the love is far away? Unrequited love makes the moon move further away? We can probably guess what the lyricist wanted to say in this song (only because the sentiment is such a cliché) but he never actually says it. I'm assuming what he meant to say was something along the lines of 'would you please love me back coz that'd be great and the moon would shine brighter and I'd hear music and it'd be like heaven on earth', but he never bothers to actually tell that story, and instead just uses a few key words and hopes we'd fill in the details. I'll show you exactly how this song was written:

Someone made a list that looked something like this:
Love
Dove
Above
Tune
Moon
Soon
Room
True
Blue
You
Too


He then chose sentences at random from a chick lit novel and replaced randomly chosen words with ones from the list.
Job Done. Another day at the office.


But there are loads of great recordings of this tune, you just have to make your brain forget it understands English so you don't notice the lyrics so much and just hear them as abstract sounds to enjoy them.

So after that long intro I'll get to my point. Here are some albums with great lyrics, and/or great lyrical delivery. If you're the kind of person that winces every time you hear this then you might enjoy some of these (they're not in order of preference, and not necessarily my favourite, just three off the top of my head):


First a jazz one:
The Newest Sound Around
Jeanne Lee and Ran Blake

Jeanne Lee knows how to deliver a lyric. 'Loverman' is performed almost exactly as written in a drawn out monotonous tone, starkly simple it hits you with the melancholic frustration of a woman who knows nothing of love who sits at home all day waiting for a man she's never met. Lyrics of 'Evil Blues' could be a cliché if it wasn't for her believability (and of course Ran Blake's kick ass 'Monkish' piano playing...I love the beginning of his solo, just three cantankerous notes sung out timed to perfection)


Next:
Knuckle Down
Ani DiFranco

I'm gonna let her speak for herself:

'I love the way your stories seem to fall from your lips
With just enough slobber so it sparkles and drips
The way you hang the whole room on a word
Like a little stick in the beak of a bird

First we touched fingers and then we touched toes
Then my army surrendered
My government overthrown
I threw myself a little role reversal and followed you home
Just dying to be chewed
The dog was chosen by the bone'






She's got the story telling and imagery of folk, the raw energy of punk and some unbelievable guitar skills, there is nothing not to love about this woman. I saw her live recently and you could see that like all great super heroes she uses her power for good and had a load of tunes about important political issues and, one of my favourites, a tune about how promiscuity is an important part of growing up and learning who you are and you shouldn't be ashamed of it. What is not to love about this woman



And lastly:
Trampoline
Miriam Ingram

There are some tunes on here with lyrics I hate, but the ones I love I really really love. They're crunchy and taste of metal, they're also completely melded with the soundscapes she creates and don't necessarily work so well in print so I won't do them a disservice here, instead go listen to 'Inhale' and 'Winter' (can't find them online so you might just have to go support an Irish artist with a trip to Tower Records).

So I decided on....

I'm working on posters for some upcoming gigs and I'd like some feedback. Vote on your favourite and tell me what you think (none of these posters are finished, there's lots of editing and messing with colour balance and levels to do). Steven McNamara took the photos and Eloise ORiordan was set engineer (that means she cut out, stuck down, painted....etc. lots of those leaves in the background, she also gave advice, drank tea, told me it might be a crap idea, told me it might be a great idea)



Poster Number 1)







Poster Number 2)








Poster number 3)






Poster number 4)

Which poster do you prefer?

Of course there are more options that aren't listed there like:


5) "none of them what were you thinking?"

6) "all of them your a genius"

7) "just google 'cute kittens' and put your name on top. done."


Leave a comment here or facebook or wherever.

Songs about Songs

Well now that title might be a little misleading because todays blog isn't strictly about 'songs about songs', it's about lyrics that arise from a frustration with song writing...but that's just not quite as catchy. At first when I was writing this blog I thought to myself 'I need to link these ideas together more, to draw more comparisons and conclusions...' and then I remembered it's not a leaving cert essay. If you'd like to draw a conclusion please do.


1) Fiona Apple: Waltz




Fiona Apple has written one song about writing songs, arguably two. I'm a big fan of Fiona Apple's two earlier albums, they're clever, they sound honest, the production is good BUT every single song is about boys. Not that that's always a bad thing, I mean the girl can put a clever spin on heartbreak but by the end of the second album I was thinking I hope she doesn't spend her whole life wracked by teenage self doubt worrying about whether 'he' really loves her. It's tempting to want to shout at her 'Hey Fiona, he's a douche' and hope that she'll hear you from the other side of the CD, move on and come across some new territory.

So when 'Extraordinary Machine' came out, her most recent and very possibly last album, I was excited the first time I listened to it and heard the lyrics on 'Parting Gift':

'Oh you silly, stupid pastime of mine
You were always good for a rhyme'

This song is meant as a parting gift to the men in her life she's written songs about (I don' think I'm just making that up, I'm pretty sure she's said so in interviews). Great I thought, nows when I get to hear an intelligent woman sing about something other than silly boys. Alas it wasn't to be. Instead the album closes with 'Waltz'

'If you don't have a song
To sing you're ok'

Supposedly this is her retirement song. So as soon as she decides not to write about heartbreak the only thing she has left to write about is how she has nothing left to write about?* This is my least favorite 'song about a song'. It's really more of an excuse, an explanation for bowing out. Singing about having nothing to sing about isn't really very interesting so lets move onto a song about a song that has a LOT to say.



2) Saul Williams: Surrender





The lyrics really work on many levels, a love song recognizing the destructive powers a lover can wield, and a song about trying to overcome his ego and surrender himself completely to his muse (who scares the bejaysus out of him). Now here's a portrayal of a strong woman that you don't get in songs often, even if she may be a mythical figure. Her strength doesn't come from adopting male traits, it's her openness, her willingness to love and her ability to reinvent herself that make her strong. You find this character a lot in Saul Williams music, he's the one of the greatest feminist lyricists I can think of off the top of my head.

The whole idea of inspiration coming from a muse is really very useful. Believing the creative idea comes from an external source is such a great way of tricking your brain into shutting your ego down. 'Is this lyric good? Is that melody too catchy/not catchy enough?' 'I dunno, not my problem I'm just doing what my muse tells me to, she's the boss'. But this song is more of a lovers wrestle, his muse won't stay still for him, her honesty and love scares him like a bachelor scared of intimacy.

Throughout the whole song he keeps repeating 'I need a second, I need a second to think' as if he has no control over the song writing, the muse is having her way with him (the cheeky minx), writing the song through him and he's fighting to have his say.


3) Ríona Sally Hartman (that's me): Song for the Dead, Song for the Living

Really the first half of the song is about the futility of music, the self indulgent folly of being a musician. In the face of tragedy what good can a song do? There's an instinct sometimes to rewrite tragedy in music into something heroic or meaningful but I don't think that approach is necessarily very honest.

The second half of the song is sung to the living:

'I'm another song, let me try to keep you warm,
let me hold you hand, let me try to heal what's sore,
And I'll search for the sun should a darkness overcome you.
I'm a hopeful song hopeful for and end to the suffering of young men.'

It's split into two halves, one half for the dead should they choose to listen and one half for the living. Deciding to write a song about a tragedy is a tricky one. Firstly for selfish reasons I'm not big into writing weepys. The term singer songwriter has taken quite a bashing over the last while unfortunately. People have stereotypes of guys with their guitars singing depressing music to their friends. Personally I think the stereotype is completely unfair but I try to avoid it none the less. The other more important reason I'm cautious about writing about tragedy is that I feel like you have to take responsibility for what you put out into the world and if what your putting out there is songs with no hope

But that's exactly how I felt about this particular tragedy that I was writing about. People had died, it was too late there was no hope for them and I wanted to be honest about that. Your instinct is to try to make everything ok, to rewrite history with a song, but sometimes tragedy makes you realize the very narrow limits of art....

....is that a conclusion? Maybe. Probably not. In conclusion go buy Sealegs on iTunes.




*To be fair the other song on the album that is arguably a song about song writing is 'Please please please' which is supposedly aimed at her record label which was pressuring her into writing:

'something familiar
Something similar
To what we know already
That will keep us steady
Steady, steady
Steady going nowhere'

So it's possible she's not a one trick pony after all, maybe she's a circus pony who's owners are big into dressage or something. Maybe given some time and artistic freedom she'll join a circus and surprise us all with her jumping through fire tricks. Here's hoping......That'd make a great children's story.

**It was hard to pick one part out of this verse to quote, Saul William's lyrics flow from one line to the next with each line revealing a possible alternate meaning for the one before it so it doesn't lend itself well to dissection. I think that's what rappers mean when they talk about 'flow', I wouldn't know though coz I'm not down with the cool kids. So here's a link to the full lyrics.

Oh Annie!

As promised I'm going to write a blog about the best ambassador pop music could ever ask for; Annie Lennox, specifically Annie Lennox's music (it needs specifying because she's an interesting lady in lots of ways).

Pop gets a bad name. Classical and jazz snigger about it behind it's back. Pop is stupid. Pop has no subtlety. All pop sounds like the Girlz Aloud or U2. Pop in the X Factor. Pop is generic*.

Of course I'm sure pop is sitting at the back of class telling all the cool kids that jazz is a nerd. All jazz sounds like a lounge lizard version of So What or Michel Bublé. Jazz doesn't know how to have fun**.

Ok enough of anthropomorphising musical genres. My point is I don't really think genres matter much. Like any label they can be useful but generally are quite limited (revolutionary I know). Think of sandwiches. Think of the best sandwich you've ever had sitting next to the worst. They're both sandwiches but the word is just so inadequate in describing either.

Which brings me to Annie Lennox.

I listen to a lot of what I call slash music. If you've never heard of it it's coz I just made the name up. What I mean by slash music is music that doesn't really fall into any one genre neatly, like Julie Feeney is pop/classical/choral (as in pop slash classical slash coral) or Rachel Ferrell's (Can I be Me) Soul/RnB/Jazz/pop. People love to categorise things but there's nothing wrong with a bit of genre bending. Mingus apparently tried for ages to get in contact with Joni Mitchell to do some collaborations but was finding it really difficult because her record label was scared if they did collaborate it'd be the death knell of her career. His label of course thought the exact same thing. Imagine! The absolute arrogance of the record labels. Maybe I'm naive but I think that's just astounding. They're an unlikely and great pair, like nutella and salami (ok here's a little tangent that has nothing to do with music or lyrics but it's my blog and I get to write about whatever I want and right now I want to write about how good nutella and salami is. On toast, cheapy white bread toast, now is not the time for health concerns, loads of nutella and spice salty salami. Yum! Of course the Mitchel Mingus analogy doesn't really stand up coz who'd be the nutella and who'd be the salami? Mingus would have to be the salami but Joni Mitchel is nothing like nutella.)

Back to Annie Lennox. Annie Lennox is NOT slash music

Annie Lennox is pure pop. Go back to that image you had of the worst sandwich sitting next to the best. Annie Lennox is the best...I don't know enough about pop to know who the worst is, maybe boyzone. Oh no wait I do know who the worst is. The worst is Westlife***.

Fist things first, pop has to be catchy. Pop is instant gratification. There's nothing wrong with a bit of instant gratification every now and then. Of course there has to be something there to sustain you...but we'll get to that later. Cue the opening bars of Walking on Broken Glass. Oh the joy! Syncopated counter melodies on piano then the strings come in and about 15 seconds in the big percussive crash and the drums kick in. Your hooked. If you're not hooked you don't have blood in your veins (or you've been studying music too long and ear training has completely leavened the hierarchy of pitches to the point where you can't tell dissonance from consonant, don't worry you can be cured I prescribe a week of dancing to Annie Lennox and singing power ballads).

The contagiousness of pop music of course is why it's so popular but it's also why it's seen as shallow, which is ridiculous. Jazz can be instant gratification in a jar, so long as you know where to look. How catchy is Blue Monk? Very. How catchy is (insert name of a million classical songs that I can hum but don't the name of here)? Very. Catchy isn't bad. What is bad is when something catches your attention, but on closer inspection you realise it's not actually a tub of ice cream in the freezer it's left over soup you made last week and put in an old ice cream tub to freeze for later (I promise that's the last ridiculous food analogy).

Usually the ideas behind pop songs are pretty simple. Something like 'I love you' or 'I hate you'. Simple isn't always bad. One of my favourite lines in a pop song is 'I hate you so much right now'. Pretty simple, sung well it's pretty effective. Of course having little twists is always nice. Like Imogen Heap's 'I love you' song Goodnight and Go which is written from the point of view of a stalker, a nice little twist that you only realise in the second verse when she sings about staring in a guys window while he gets undressed and flicks through the TV channels 'and you think you're alone'.

Back to Annie Lennox. In general Annie Lennox's lyrics aren't very 'clever'. I don't mean that as a bad thing. They're more emotional than intellectual. She's an openly emotional lady, that's what I love about her. Unfortunately she probably finds it a burden. Poor Annie, no ones gonna pay attention to your chronic depression if you write anthemic pop songs, even if you do call them Walking on Broken Glass or Dark Road or The Hurting Time. Love is Blind is a great funky ass wiggler, you're on the dance-floor wiggling away having loadsa fun but pay attention and you'll realise you're wiggling to ; 'Sometimes I feel like I don't exist, cut my veins slit my wrists, goodbye goodbye that's all she wrote as she tied that knot around her throat...tired of being so screwed up, tired of all this desperation...'.

I feel like every blog post should have a conclusion or a summary. In conclusion: go listen to Annie Lennox.

*Pop. Is. Not. Stupid.

**Jazz. Knows. How. To. Have. Fun.

***Westlife's song 'What about now' is the worst song in the history of the planet. You know that song 'The Venga Bus'? It's worse than that. You know the music on the Harry Norman adds? This is worse than that. Now I realize that the boys from Westlife probably had very little to do with the writing of the song but they put they're name to it so now it's out in the world it's their responsability. The chorus is nothing but questions? I swear? Wanna know how to write an epic pop ballad? Just put a question mark at the end of every sentence? The sentences don't even have to be particularly coherent or form any kind of a story or narrative? Hinting that the song might be about a relationship is good coz people love lyrics about relationships but the vaguer you are the better coz then everyone can relate? The lyrics go something like:

What about now?

What about today?

What if you’re making me all that I was meant to be?

What if our love had never went away?

What if it’s lost behind words we could never find?

Baby, before it’s too late,

What about now?

Is that a lamp in the corner?

How about chinese for dinner?......eugh I made those last two lines up but only coz I was getting so bored with the actual lyrics.

Just so you don't think I'm unfairly bashing pop here I promise to write about how bad the lyrics to jazz standards can be sometime.