Critique on Wolf Song

[fightffyrdmns]

Hello,

 

I just finished writing a new song and would like some comments or critique. The quality isn't great because it's just a rough cut I record on my laptop. Thanks!

 

The song is here: http://lyingtechnique.bandcamp.com/album/originals

 

It's entitled 'Wolf Song' and you have to press the play button.

 

Lyrics:

 

Last winter, you packed your bags and left me alone

To fend for myself all on my own

You left me for the wolves to devour every one of my bones

 

Your smile lasted through the summer,

then came autumn and everything faded to gray

 

I tried very hard to forget you,

but that has not been working out for me

In my dreams, you are there to haunt me,

but now I can't even fall asleep

 

This summer, I wanted badly to be free

from the grasp that you had on me

I wrote it all down, but just never said it out loud

 

I made myself believe that you didn't mean anything to me

 

I tried very hard to forget you,

but that has not been working out for me

In my dreams, you are there to haunt me,

but now I can't even fall asleep

 

You were the sun, to brighten up my day,

but Clementine, please just go away.

[blue2blue]

Hi, Judy

 

This has a lot of earnest charm, there's an endearing vulnerability to it and a nice intimacy.

 

But I couldn't help but wonder if it couldn't be tightened up just a little with some small tinkerings.

 

For one thing, the rhyme scheme is a bit inconsistent. No rule says you can't make that work for you, but here it seems to lend a slightly disconnected, loose end feel. By locking up your rhyme scheme with your song's meaning, you can reinforce key points (because the rhyme words stick in the listener's mind, as someone was pointing out in this forum only a few days ago -- something a lot of us realize on some level, but may not always pay enough attention to in practice).

 

I wasn't entirely sure about the seemingly implied smile/flower analogy... sorta works for me, sorta doesn't -- and that seems to draw too much attention to it, for me, which is distracting.

 

Another place where I wonder if a small change might not go more than a little ways is in the chorus refrain:

In my dreams, you are there to haunt me,

but now I can't even fall asleep

It sounds kind of silly, but for whatever reasons, I think I'd be more comfortable with this if there was a tense change:

In my dreams, you

were

there to haunt me,

but now I can't even fall asleep

Maybe it's just me but that small change would seem kind of natural, and it underlines a sort of bad-to-worse progression and increasing emotional despair.

 

One last small thing, the introduction of the lover's name in the last verse seems to put extra weight on it, as though its revelation is some sort of punch line/surprise ending. But I don't see that fitting into this song, otherwise. I'd suggest introducing it earlier in the song so that the last line use of it doesn't seem like its own issue or become a sexual identity issue that distracts from the real core of the song: emotional loss.

 

A sweet, sad little song.

[fightffyrdmns]

First off, I would like to thank you for taking the time to listen and comment.

 

I'll try to work on the lyrics a bit so the rhymes are more consistent. I noticed that earlier, but I wasn't sure if it were a big enough issue to fix.

 

Hm. I never thought about changing the tense. I think I like it better your way, actually.

 

This song was loosely based off of my favorite film, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. The two main characters are Joel and Clementine. I empathize with Joel and I just threw in the last line for fun and as a little reference to the film. Is it really that off-putting? Hm.

 

Thanks again!

[blue2blue]

Oh, it's not off-putting, it's just that with the name's introduction in the very last line, it seems like its intended somehow to have extra weight or significance (like a punch line or surprise ending, something our song, poetry, and written literature has trained us to look for), so it puts the mind to wondering what that signficance would be, and that, it seemed to me, might prove to be a distraction.

 

 

 

EDIT: Of course, people who've seen the flick -- I'm just back from reading the Wikipedia abstract on it -- may get the reference, but you may think twice about whether or not you wanted to tie your song so directly to the movie. That said, no reason you can't change the lyric in the future if you like-- as long as your fans haven't bonded irreversibly with it, which can happen.

 

PS... I'm just charmed that the name Clementine has found its way back into the popular culture. When I was a kid growing up in the 50s and 60s, that name was just about the apotheosis of retro-clunk, remembered almost exclusively for the song, "My Darling Clementine," and a western movie of the same name.