They all can't be the best...

... but you know you're in trouble when you can't find a single interesting or novel line in the song for a title...

Like I always say... songwriting's like many other natural processes... you don't stop in the middle just 'cause you don't like what's coming out. That said... you don't necessarily put it all on display, either... This one may be a real judgment call.

Rainy Day on Temple Ave

[soundclick]

I saw her again

and she was smiling in the sun

but I remember when

she was down and she was almost done

she had herself a man and

he was doing her so wrong

she said I'll

give you what I can

but I'm not sure that I'm that strong

And I said Baby, that's OK

I know I should not stay

I wouldn't want your tomorrows

to be as sad as our today

There was a time

when I counted the two of us as one

there was a dream

I thought all my darkness was all gone

Some things have to be and

some things can never last for long

and some times you just see

to try to hang on is just ( so damn) wrong

And I said Baby, that's OK...

One drink buys the next

until you're staring at the stars

wondering what went wrong

and wondering where the hell you are

Thad was

ten thousand miles ago

but I guess I haven't come all that far

I'm still wandering through these streets

I'm still lost among those stars

And I said Baby, that's OK...

2008-09-06

©2008, TK Major

Nothing wrong with that song, its the simple ones that resonate best, often enough.

We spend too much time trying to sound intelligent, methinks.

On the plus side... it uses the word baby prominently.

I actually was still tinkering over the last hour or two, I massaged the mix, did a little edit that gave a boost to the second chorus and I'm not hating it as much as I did. As so often happens, at first I thought the vocal was ok but as time wore on, I found it bothered me more and more. Some days my pitchiness really bothers me and some days I barely notice it -- on the same recordings. I don't get it.

Yeah... I'm hoping it'll be one of those things where it grows on me or people connect with it or something. You never can tell.

Nice guitar groove, and I like the way the chorus goes minor. A few rough spots with the lyric/vocal phrasing - "she was down and she was almost done" has one too many "she wases" - but those should get sanded smooth with some more performances.

I would actually like the chorus to be a little MORE minor. Right now it sounds like Am G Am G | Am G Fmaj7 Em - and having three repetitions of that Am G seems like a lost melodic opportunity. I really like the chromatic pedal on the second two lines, it would be nice to have something in the previous line that sets that pedal up a little bit better.

But both of these things are just quibbles. It's a strong song about lost and lonely hearts gone wrong. "One drink buys the next" is a great line, as is "I wouldn't want your tomorrows/to be as sad as our today".

I'm not sure if this was a conscious reference or not, but the wrong/strong rhyme also appears in Dylan's You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine:

"You say you love me

And you're thinkin' of me,

But you know you could be wrong.

You say you told me

That you wanna hold me,

But you know you're not that strong."

Good piece. Maturity and acceptance without dismissal of the importance of the time and place and togetherness lost.

Title not so much, when there is less here that says more.

Like: That's OK

Like: Baby, that's OK.

Get Baby right up there on top, where she belong.

I'm not feeling the first verse(s) before the first chorus. It sounds a little cookie-cutter both musically and lyrically - at first. It may just be the lack of embellishment in that first little bit. As the song moves along it gets much better. The chords in the chorus really work nicely and take the song to good places - nice work!

I'm not sure if the chosen tempo is an attempt to move away from the slower tempos I've been hearing in your recent work but I couldn't help hearing the possibility of having this played in half time instead. I just don't know if you're really doing anything that takes good advantage of the double time - eg. I'm not feeling propelled forward so much and the lyrics don't point to a sense of urgency. Maybe it's just that some spots of the performance need to be really tight for me to feel like the tempo works.

Ram -- I actually added in the extra she was's. Sounded better as I was doing it. I'll re-examine it as I move along. Very close on the chords Am7/G/C/G/Am7/G/F/Em. And -- though I didn't recognize it until I read your post, yeah, Dylan's "Most Likely You'll..." was certainly the source of inspiration -- or at least resonance -- for that rhyme... [EDIT: 'one drink buys the next' is program talk -- 'though I'm not a 12 step guy. But it is, absolutely, a great image. And really true.]

Red -- I gave serious thought to making it "Baby, I'm OK." But I've probably already got too many songs with baby in the title (I know, I didn't think you could have too many, either... but... This all goes back to being a beginning songwriter/former college poet and saying "I'll never write a song with 'baby' in it," I guess. I just checked my songblog database and it appears I have 9 songs with baby in the title, alone. No kidding.

eeglug -- I kind of feel the way you feel about the first verse about the whole song. Indeed, in started out as one of my typical threw-love-away-cryin'-in-my-diet-cherry-cola (well, it'd be beer in the song, of course, I didn't put all those years of drinking in not to wring the bathos out of it)... but when I decided my timing was just too rotten yesterday to even get that out (I made a couple passes), I decided to put it against a beat, at least in recording and... well, one thing led to another and it became a mid-tempo country rocker kinda thing... I wasn't too sure myself about that 'cause I didn't want to mess with my Strat (needs new strings bad -- just like my dread, for that matter). Obviously, having a beat only helped so much. I made a move at doing some time-based edits on the guitars but that just looked like a can of worms (when I should have just redone the guitars)... so there you have it... it's all explained by sloth.

Hey.....

I like this tune. It moves along nicely with a groove, tells a good story, and it kept me listening right to the end.

Give it a chance, man....it fits your catalouge perfectly.

And don't get all worried about pitchiness......your voice is what it is and it is an integral part of your sound, and you know where I'm comin' from with that.

I keep hearing another instrument during the chorus......B3 organ maybe......

I really like the music, and the whole thing definitely has a dylan-esque feel to it. It's very relaxing and enjoyable sonically, simple and not over embellished. I like the halting cadence too, but in places it just feels like you ran out of syllables and added a few filler words. Something about the lyrics reminds me of the Counting Crows (I don't really know how much comparisons help in a critique, but I can't help myself.) Speaking of lyrics, I find these to be a little obvious for the most part, apart from a couple clever lines that I like a lot. On the other hand, I firmly believe that lyrics are just part of a song and not necessarily it's primary function- so except for an awkward phrase or two (ex:she said I'll give you what I can/but I'm not sure that I'm that strong) I think it all works well together and the vocal melody in the chorus invites you to sing along.

B2B, it's hard to critique you- your critiques are so well thought out and insightful, I just assume you bring the same attention to detail to every song you write- so I get the nagging feeling that you planned every moment and lyric and I'm just missing the point HAHA! Anyways, good song overall.

Well, some places I ran out of words and added a few filler syllallyllables... or was that the other way around. I actually roll that stuff around a bit (contrary to appearances) and there's seldom a line I haven't done 15 ways -- but not necessarily any of the 'right' ones.

On the critique writing vs songwriting thing... I'm afraid I'm mostly a big ball of intuition on the songwriting... intuition that drives experimentation. So, more than thinking through things when I'm writing, it's more like I'm poking, prodding, hacking, we'd call it in the coder community. (Not access-hacking, rather trial and error, seat of the pants coding.)

But, yeah,I guess I've settled into a sort of headspace where I'm always looking to draw inner relationships and correspondences between parts of a song and other parts or trying to milk associations or words or phrases -- or just exploiting puns (sometimes rather shamelessly).

Still, it's not any kind of organized process. It's just kind of rummaging around in the darkness of my creative soul, sorting the cliches out by feel...

BTW....how about 'Your Tomorrows'?

What I still can't figure out about this is how you even wrote the lyric if it didn't interest you very much.

Not stopping just because you don't like what's coming out I understand. You can almost always go back over a thing and improve on what you first captured. But nothing interesting you here?

There is always a sliver or germ or seed or something solid and important (to me) to get me started writing. So yeah, we know that after that it often runs off the rails and over the edge, lots of screaming and smoke and tragedy and dust etc.

Still, wasn't there something you needed to say about the person you were writing about or for? What's the center or heart of that? Did it escape the song?

Very nice...a little Dylan sound...nice guitar parts...don't think it needs other sounds...this is more like a simple singer songwriter piece that would go over well live...good job!!

how bout...sad as our today

What I still can't figure out about this is how you even wrote the lyric if it didn't interest you very much. Not stopping just because you don't like what's coming out I understand. You can almost always go back over a thing and improve on what you first captured. But nothing interesting you here? There is always a sliver or germ or seed or something solid and important (to me) to get me started writing. So yeah, we know that after that it often runs off the rails and over the edge, lots of screaming and smoke and tragedy and dust etc. Still, wasn't there something you needed to say about the person you were writing about or for? What's the center or heart of that? Did it escape the song?

Well... the emotional situation behind the song has some resonance for me, yes. I suppose you could make a case for the aggregate of the lyrics to mean more to me that the sum of the individual phrases... but...

And I do like the lines about "still wandering these streets / and still lost among those stars" -- but that's a direct reference to the 1949 Maxwell Anderson/Kurt Weill musical play, Lost in the Stars...

PS to Lenny -- my working title was, indeed, "Your Tomorrows." But I never intended to leave it that.

PPS to tbryson -- Thanks!

I like your song.

I'm the same way when it comes to titles, sometimes I really struggle with a finished work to find the right name for it.

For a while I was on a kick of purposely naming tunes with titles that could not be found anywhere in the actual song. Lately, however, I've said screw it....I'll take a title however I can get it.

I like it. Good groove. Yea, there's some obvious stuff going on. I don't care if the song puts a tap in my toe. I would change the last line to read "And she said Baby, that's okay..." because the song puts two people together, drifts off that thought and leaves me wondering what happened to her.

oldnewbie -- and that's why I can never remember which classic Dylan song is which... songs I love... songs I can almost remember most of the words to (unlike my own songs) -- yet I pretty much can't tell you which one is "Obviously Five Believers" and which one is "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream."

Cripes -- she lives happily ever after... without "me." Just like all my old GFs.