..Sometimes a musical idea sometimes lyrical, hopefully both.
It starts so small. A word, a note, a phrase, a riff. You work on it to make it grow; sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it flows and often you’re not sure where it will go.
Like a child you give it structure, yet you want to leave it alone to develop with a freedom and naturalness and innocence.
You pick it up and put it down searching for the right word or sound. Then you begin to understand what it’s trying to say and hope that you don’t get in the way. You hope you can extract it from within, you slowly, slowly tease it out but always, always there is doubt.
Too many words then not enough, they don’t quite scan or their sound is wrong. You hold on to phrases you should let go like they are somehow cast in stone.
You think it’s good at 2.00am but the next day it’s only good enough and yet nothing is ever good enough. You rework it and rework it until you think you can do no more. Then you tinker a little more.
It’s nearly always best to simplify which betrays the work you cast aside.
Then there comes the time when the lyric and the music fall into line with a power together that neither could possess alone.
When it’s finished it seems to have a life of its own and is somehow not still a part of you.
Then you play it for someone else and they like it or hate it but they can’t say why. At times you think it’s a waste of time.
Still you like it and some others will too, and it would not exist if not for you. It’s unique, it’s yours so it can’t be wrong, and anyway, it’s just a song.
