My husband told me to write a protest song. So I did. I don't like it. But at least I can say I wrote one song in 2012.
The trouble is, the songs I write when I'm pissed off are ugly to me. I want to write something pretty. If I write something.
Everything has been said. It's been said the same way, with minor variations, ten zillion times.
Thus, the old axiom comes into play. PLEASE YOURSELF.
This whole music thing is just a scam; a delusion. Everybody wants to get rich off their music. Nobody's getting rich. Nobody is making one thin dime.
Neil Young is recording old folk tunes. Just like Springsteen did awhile back. "This Land Is Your Land"? I sang that in my third grade music recital. And just as good as Neil does it. Maybe better.
Even Neil Young has forgone his Harvest Moon days. If Roy Orbison was alive today, he'd be recording Diane Warren songs.
Because it's all been done.
I think maybe music has an expiration date. After, say, sometime in the late nineteen eighties, music expired. Like sour milk.
Why do we all keep going back to the trough of "oldies music"? Because that's the last time music was good.
I was reading an article in Entertainment Weekly (which is becoming increasingly irrelevant to me), about this HUGE hit song, "Call Me Maybe". It's supposedly one of the best songs ever created, in the annals of all mankind.
So, curiosity got the best of me, and I checked out the song on YouTube. I'm always on the lookout for good new music.
What the hell?
The article went on and on about how this song got wedged into everyone's brain, and they couldn't shake it, no matter how hard they tried.
I couldn't recite one line of that song to you now, if my life depended on it.
This is what passes for genius nowadays?
You be the judge:
I take it, one just has to come up with a three-word hook, and the world will beat a path to their door.
I could probably cobble something together like that, but geez, I just don't want to.
I want to say something, not necessarily profound, but meaningful. At least to me.
That's where the "please yourself" mantra comes into play.
If I was to write a song, it would be something pleasing to my ear. It would be personal. Not universal, because what is universality nowadays, but another word for crap?
I prefer something like:
I have seen the morning burning
Golden on the mountain in the sky
Achin' with the feelin' of the freedom
Of an eagle when she flies
Neil may have abandoned his Harvest Moon days for oddly-construed renditions of Oh Susanna, but not me.
The next song I write will be something nice; something that makes me happy to sing it.
And I will make millions of dollars. In my imagination. But that's okay.
I'm going to go old school. When people wrote songs for the love of music. Not for the love of riches.
When all bets are off, that's the time when inspiration soars.
I've got no one to let down, except myself. I don't intend to do that.
