16 Jan, 2010 The Hurricane
It is a different climate and a different season that I find myself in, but other than that this year has begun leading on directly with an activity that I spent much of last year doing more intensively than ever previous. It is called song writing and although I do it professionally, way and above that I do it for fun.
The typical album release cycle may only call for me to help produce a dozen or so songs every 2 to 3 years. However of late I view that as both professional and creatively detrimental, dangerous even – in the way that it encourages laziness and the creative muscles to go to rust.
As a result through knowing that I was soon to be free of any exclusive contracts, I for the first time set myself a much bigger target of creating at least 30 new songs annually. Working out at little more than one song a fortnight, with the right amount of drive and discipline, I convinced myself that it would be more than attainable.
Of course writing a bunch of songs is one thing, while writing a bunch of great songs is something else entirely. When it comes to deciding which category these new songs will fall into? Well, we can all have a go at being judge and jury!
In any case, as I set out energetically working on the development of new writing partnerships, ones that could feed me inspiring sounds that I could bounce off. The experiment as hoped led to a creative surge never before experienced. My target was more than met and the outcome told me with full proof that I was capable of being much more prolific than I had believed. That was genuinely an exciting realisation, but it also presented me the uneasy challenge of finding an inspirational outlet for these creations – beyond of course my requisite with Simple Minds.
Hence the soon to be launch of Lostboy! AKA (www.lostboyaka.com)
Like a puzzle or a game, songwriting engrosses and overwhelms in the most enjoyable way. Additionally I have found it to be like some kind of meditation. I can never look on it as work, as instead I tend see it as something which is of course fundamental, but also appeals to me in the same way as a hobby or pastime.
It is something that I play with, and that in my opinion is how pop creativity functions best. When it is done with a playfulness that is. Opposed to being set about with furrowed brow!
The puzzle element obviously comes with my gig as a singer and lyric writer. It is a role that sees me searching always to find the combination of words and melody that will match, or even better, explain the perceived sentiments behind a piece of music that has come to me.
To write the lyric for Promised You A Miracle for example, I needed not much more than a short blast of inspiration to find some words that could act in summing up perfectly the positive feel of the music. In addition I needed a melody to dance around the structure. Having grown up fascinated with pop music, studying it all the time -unaware as I did – as a kid with imagination, meant I was automatically equipped to write Miracle and many other lyrics of a similar nature. More than anything what I needed there and then as I attempted to write our first bona – fide hit song, was to discover something that would strike clearly and was obviously catchy enough to lodge in the brain of any casual listeners who came across it on radio. I am not too modest to say that a good job was done, and that was the same overall opinion from most people around us who after their first hearing usually smiled and said “It’s a hit!”
Alternately, some years later, a song called Street Fighting Years took a lot more out of me. Never in a million years coming across as a radio tune, it was a stunning piece. But it followed no previous musical path that I was familiar with, and as will be plain to you who know the track, I was no longer in the world of simple pop arrangements. Indeed where I was on that occasion as I grasped with the challenge of writing something complementary that would sit with it – is better described as unknown territory.
To explain. Mick Mc Neil had come up yet again with this “thing” that was beautiful and dramatic, but also far too long-winded to be a regular song. It had no real certified verse or chorus parts that would work to any regular degree, and as it unfolded it sounded more like the soundtrack to a widescreen movie – one that is yet to be made.
The melody was glorious and proud for sure. It was sublime in fact. But somehow, like most (national) anthems, it was not in anyway comfortable to sing with. My problem in truth was that I had no idea what the “movie it suggested” would be about – nevermind how it could begin to be told. But begin I did, sat by a window in a house on the edge of Loch Earn in March’ 88.
Thinking about it again, there is no other song that I can think of that is reminiscent in its shape and form – to Street Fighting Years. And as a puzzle, it nearly got the better of me.
Recalling now the instrumental music to SFY as originally presented, the crux of the problem was that I could not tell if what I was listening to was a happy song, or a sad song, a song of victory or a lament? The mood of the tune seemed to contain various experiences, like the same photographic landscape shot in all four seasons and then superimposed on each other. The feel of it reminded me of the expression of duality that the Japanese have and refer to as the “ Day Of The Fox’s Marriage.” Used to describe those days typically witnessed at end of March/April when it can be both bright and sunny as well as cold and rainy, and all at the same time.
In the end with SFY and due to its scope, I decided it would be a song mirroring someone’s inner emotions during a massive end of summer storm. Occurring outside the window and from a position of relative safety, the character of the song in turn is using the display on show as a metaphor for the turbulence often so real within his and all our lives.
The fact that the track shifted in many different musical parts meant that I had the chance to use a different kind of narrative than that of the stock rock song. One that was primarily detailing the character’s thoughts as they moved through his brain, slowly at first, before then racing to an emotional climax.
The final part of SFY hopefully evokes a feeling that is known to anyone who has witnessed true and personal tragedy, and knows not whether to feel victorious having survived, or be swallowed in the sense of loss that has fallen on others either close to us, or those with whom we cannot help but empathise.
Jim Kerr