A few weeks ago I was asked by a friend of mine to write her a song. Well my initial reaction was of course – it wasn’t until I actually sat down to think about the “song” that I realised there were a great many considerations involved. The thing is, on this occasion I wasn’t just “writing a song”, I had been commissioned to wright a song and so there were other factors involved here such as the type of song my friend / client was looking for.
The brief was fairly simple – the song should be influenced by Lily Allen, Rumer, Adele and Paloma Faith. Once I’d looked these people up to see who or indeed what they were I set about thinking about the song itself. The big challenge for me is the words. Generally speaking most music is composed to the text rather than the other way around. Well for someone who generally writes music for situations this was suddenly quite a challenge as instead of writing music, certainly initially I had to become a writer of words!
So having established that I need to write some words the next challenge is what should the song be about. Well a little research shows that most songs nowadays are generally about Love, or as Jemma put it “Lurve”. Not being a poet this is so far proving to be quite a challenge. Not only that but I am quite keen for the words to tell some sort of story – hopefully nothing too contrived or predictable! Given all these factors then, writing a song could potentially be quite a challenge. I will keep you posted.
Pick me! I’ll write a song …
Love songs can be found in the histories and cultures of most societies, though their ubiquity is a modern phenomenon. A highly controversial and startling explanation of the genesis of love songs can be found in Denis de Rougemont’s “Love in the Western World”. De Rougemont’s thesis is that love songs grew out of the courtly love songs of the troubadours, and that those songs represented a rejection of the historical Christian notion of love. -`….
See you real soon