JanJohansen

Hi friends Norm mentioned that the song has to be approved by experts. I hope that's right, but I have a friend who is a successful songwriter who has made a few music documentaries for BBC and he told me that songs were approved by marketing experts and not the old fashioned A&R people and consequently the quality of songs had suffered. I have no idea if this is true, but it would be interesting to hear the views of people who knows a lot more than me about the industry. Jan

Good morning friends I'm pleased this subject has caught your attention and it has given me little more insight into the different thought processes we have. Typo, love your line:' closely aligned perspectives that disagree lol', very funny. I think most of us agree with John that whether the lyric has an emotional theme, a literal/figurative story or a combination of both, they all have to evoke emotions in such a way that the listener feels fullfilled at the end. All I wanted to get across was that a song can have an emotional theme only without having a literal/figurative story as a backdrop and still hit the parts that no beers can reach. Further I think that all creative art can be technically very good but artistically very poor and visa versa, but that's another issue which we might consider when we are reviewing someone's work. Have a nice weekend. Jan

Hi friends I've noticed that some people think that if you write a love song which mainly contains emotions, they're often asking questions like what happened or why the singer feel this way. Alistair mentioned in one of his reviews that you don't have to know too much of the literal background to those feelings and just accept/relate to them without this background. This is something I also strongly believe in. In some cases where the singer want to make each member of the audience feel like the singer is singing to each individual person alone, there can't be any story behind the emotions. If it is a story behind the emotions, the listener won't feel like the singer is singing to him or her alone if what's happening in the story has not happened to the listener, which often would be most of the audience. However the emotions the singer expresses are emotions each individual in the audience can relate to, and will therefore make them think about their own individual circumstances which causes these strong uiversal emotions. Anyway, does this makes sense? I think Ray Charles knew that when he sang his heart rendering version of the Don Gibson's standard 'I Can't Stop Loving You' which is one of many standards which expresses only emotions without a story. See below: I CAN'T STOP LOVING YOU I can't stop loving you I've made up my mind To live in memory Of the lonesome times I can't stop wanting you It's useless to say So I'll just live my life In dreams of yesterday Those happy hours That we once knew Tho' long ago Still make me blue They say that time Heals a broken heart But time has stood still Since we've been apart Be interesting to know what other thinks about the subject. Jan

Hi folks I'm pleased that this topic got such great a response. It's obviously a subject we all have thought about and in the main agrees upon or in other words, (cliche', cliche' cliche') 'singing from the same hyhm sheet'. Thanks Jan

Hi friends John Nightwolf made me think of the use of cliches in songwriting which is a subject I've been flirting with for a long time. His comments were something like that the use of cliches did not enhance the content of the lyric. My take on this is that the stream of words that make up a particular cliche' can be used as originally as the single word. I also think that in our struggle to avoid cliches at all cost in order to achieve originality we sometimes can compromise the way the lyric is intended to make the listener feel. Perhaps I am wrong here, but I'm a strong believer in that the way the listeners feel when they hear the song is more important than than what they think when they hear the song. In other words to touch the emotional parts of the listener is more important than to address their rational part, especially in conversational writing. It would be very interesting to find out what others think about the use of cliches in songwriting. Thanks for bringing it up John Jan