Songwriting Class March 2nd, 2015

So last night Rich gave us an assignment: a movie producer walks in and says to you, the lyricist, "Quick, I need a song for my movie. It's called Paradise Ballroom and I need it in five minutes. Go!"

Much scribbling and cursing and crossing out later, all six of us had at least the verse. Tom had written the whole darn song! Mark's immediate mental picture was of the hotel in The Shining, and after that I couldn't get mazes out of my mind.

And you know, all of us, no matter what we'd written, all of us had done a better job than Graham Edge and Adrian Gurvitz, the original Paradise Ballroom lyricists. It was a bit of a mess.

So we don't spend a lot of time in class saying "this sucks," but there is a value in discussing why the best-intentioned song falls flat. It's hard to save your song when you have a line like this in the first verse:

Cause it's a pity if you're lettin' someone come and steal your wife

and he thinks she's still pretty

And speaking of wife stealing, we switched from bad songs to breakup songs and discussed Someday by Mariah Carey and Someday You'll Want Me to Want You, sung here by Patsy Cline, the queen of broken hearts. That led us to ask: what's your favorite breakup song? I Set Fire to the Rain, You Oughta Know and Free Fallin immediately came to mind.

For homework we're going to write a breakup song, the more painful the better. See you Wednesday!

(p.s. This is my favorite breakup song. Weird Al, call me.)