Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Monday, May 25, 2009

A Songwriter's Dilemma

Songs, you know what - I want to say a few thing or twos about some of the song lyrics I've occasionally posted here. A number of them have not been entirely up-to-snuff. No, I mean it. What's more, a number of them (the same number) have not been entirely serious. I've posted a semi-decent number of lyricses, but I'd guess the ones that were serious could probably be numbered on the fingers of one hand. Give or take polydactyly. Point is: a lot of them were written kind of jokingly, all in one go.

(never mind the fact that some of my most awesome songs were written DEAD-SERIOUSLY, "all in one go")

The reason I don't normally post lyrics up by themselves for the songs I really love of mine is, I hate to put the words out there without the melody that they make sing. You know? So, I'm working on that aspect - recording some of this stuff in rough demo form, but for now, that's what we're stuck with. Dry words. And that's not how I want to put some of my babies out there to the world! So I don't, by and large.

Now that's not a dilemma, though: here's the dilemma. All the songs I'm writing lately sound like country songs. Or maybe not all, but an abnormal number do. Abnormal, considering I went through my first 350+ songs without writing a single one that I'd describe as country! After all this time, to tailspin into a whole spate of country-tinged numbers is enough to make me puke in my beer!

On the assumption that puking in one's beer is more 'rock' than crying in one's beer.

But I mean it as a metaphor only. There's always a better place to puke than one's premium, delicious beer! Whereas the major-label American water-style lagers preferred by most C&W-listening, hat-wearing honkey-tonkeys would no doubt only be improved by a seasoning of bitter tears.

Don't mistake me! I love certain legendary dead Country stalwarts, as well as a select few living legends of the genre. And some of the up-and-comer young bucks (and particularly, buckesses), sure do show adequate sass! But for ME to be writing that stuff, it comes off problematic in my mind. Never mind I'm a Southerner (South Jersey). If I wrote some Southern-Rock inflected tunes I'd be fine with it. But that's as far as she goes - Southern Rock ain't Country.

At some point during this article I seem to have decided "Country" gets a capital 'C'. Well maybe it does. But NOT FROM ME!!

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