Can a song be too honest?
| Posted in Writer's Block
I’ve just written a new song – my first in quite some time. Like all of the songs that fill up my acoustic set, it is, just possibly, a tiny bit too personal. So should I play it at my next gig?
This might seem like a daft question. After all, whenever I plug my earphones into my iPod, the songwriters that I enjoy the most are all relentlessly honest in their choice of lyrics, throwing open their lives to their listeners. Stop and think for a moment about how brave an act that is – to lay bare your thoughts to millions of strangers and invite criticism. In my opinion, it’s what separates genuinely exciting new music from all the churned-out pop fluff that says nothing and exists for no better reason than flogging a few CDs.
But many of those artists who are brave enough to expose themselves in this way are masters of their craft, playing to perhaps thousands of fans at a time. I’m just a bloke with a guitar, a decent enough voice and, crucially, a very small room of people, almost all of whom are my friends. If it’s frightening to play a very personal song in front of the record-buying public, is it therefore terrifying to play a song that might be gossiped about in the pub, post-gig?
It’s a problem I’ve come up against before. When I returned to playing gigs in 2007 after a seven year break, I wrote an entirely new set ready for my first show. Each song – many of which I’m still playing – was deeply personal and honest. I hadn’t planned it that way, it’s just how I tend to write. By the time I arrived on stage I was so used to the words I was singing that the reaction from much of the audience shocked me. People I had known for years were pale, with tears falling off their cheeks. I took to worrying that I had recreated the scene from the Wedding Singer where Adam Sandler plays his one and only song to Drew Barrymore, and that the crowd were in fact crying with laughter. Thankfully, a helpful heckler disabused me of that notion by asking loudly where the razorblades were.
Since then I’ve taken to interspersing the songs with crowd banter to reinforce the idea that although my songs might not be particularly cheerful, that doesn’t mean I’m not. But this weekend, on Sunday evening, I’ll possibly be introducing a new song to my friends for the first time in at least a year, and they will all know what it’s about. Awkward? Oh yes…
But of course I will play it, because I’ve written it now and I like it, and I want it to be heard. I’ll probably play it to death in successive gigs, in fact, until everyone is so used to hearing it that it doesn’t matter anymore. But I would be interested in knowing whether this a common worry among songwriters at my level, the musicians who play to friends rather than fans. Can a song be too honest?
About Barney Jameson
A contributor, editor and in some cases creator of more music and pro audio magazines than he cares to remember, Barney Jameson is a veteran of writing about gear, and a pretty keen singer songwriter to boot.
Having started his musical education reading old copies of the Melody Maker while riding the tube to University in the mid-nineties, Barney once sang in a band called Sugarstone, troubling record company chequebooks not quite enough to make it a career option. Instead, he achieved his goal of starting a music magazine of his own when he founded Playmusic in the early noughties. Later on, having exploited VIP access to as many festivals as possible, he wrote about the pro audio industry throughout Europe and the Middle East, travelling to far-flung destinations such as Dubai, Doha and Muscat (nice mountains).
As the latest addition to the DV247 team, Barney has big plans. But when he’s not plotting online domination of the musical instrument world, he keeps himself busy writing songs on a battered old acoustic guitar and playing them to audiences in his home town.
Tags: how to write a song, Songwriting, writing a song
So how did the song go down?
I think honesty in songs is interesting, because once you start being completely laid bare you\’re also opening up speculation concerning any other song you write.
Lyrically I\’m not shy about expressing myself (natch) but it\’s meant in the past that when I\’ve just wanted to write a sad ballad for fun, people have appeared at the end of the gig and gone \"which ex was that about then?\"
It doesn\’t always occur to people that someone can write honestly and hypothetically at once, maybe because the idea of someone who can do both with the same sincerity is an unsettling prospect?
Rob Sandall
I have a tiny theory about this one… My take is that it’s OK to write deeply personal songs BUT you should never forget your audience isn’t really interested in sharing your pain. What they’re looking for is something THEY can latch on to. So by all means write from personal experience, but translate the experience so it can be related to anyone’s life. Even better, find something in your story that lifts the listener. Most people, when they go to the cinema, expect a happy ending of some sort, even if they have to go through two hours of tragedy to get there.
MarkG
Tough one isn’t it! After all, you can only write about what you know about and most of our experiences concern ourselves. But I always assume audiences are more interested in themselves than the songwriter, which I mean in a good way. I agree with Mark G. What I try to do is initially write the song in the first person, to get the emotion and sense of depth, then transpose it into the second or third person to make it seem less personal and more accessible for others to relate to themselves. If the words ‘me’ and ‘I’ are fundamental to the sense of the lyric (I’m a bit too brutal with myself about avoiding them) then I try to phrase it as if I were a story teller, a device which can help make the lyric seem still further removed from more private corners of one’s own soul. Sting and Ray Davis can both be particularly good at that device. Finally, if its one of those songs that explore ‘the human condition’ as so many songs are, I try to look at it through 360 degrees, so the lyric considers as many possible view points as you can reasonably stuff into three verses and a chorus. This can often provide the perfect opportunity to offer that lift/smile at the end, bitter sweet but still up the creek etc…. Just as well we’ve got the music as well to help get the original emotion across and the audience from not become suicidal!
Francis Power
It’s ALL about storytelling. Spot on with Ray Davis – Waterloo Sunset is almost the perfect example. There’s sadness in there; there’s a songwriter speaking in the first person; but we’re totally wrapped up in Terry and Julie’s story. And how does it end? ‘Waterloo Sunset’s FINE’…
MarkG
I’ve always wondered if there are any sad singalongs out there… most of the choruses people below out are always positive, but there’d be something touching about a mass crowd outro with a bitterly maudlin lyric!
Rob Sandall
I wouldn\’t say that. Look at Kid Cudi
Art Vein