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January 13, 2007
Sad Songs
While we were at the Hall of Fame Lounge in Nashville on Tuesday night, January 9, we had the opportunity to hear the work of some other songwriters.
What they do at the Hall of Fame is schedule "rounds" where you have a group of three or four songwriters each playing a song in turn.
Sheryl and Asli were actually a "round" of two songwriters, which is unusual. Normally, you have at least three, and usually four songwriters in a round.
The songwriters who came on right after Sheryl and Asli were an interesting bunch. But one songwriter really drew our attention. She seemed intent on using her songwriting as a catharsis of some sort. Her life was apparently quite painful, and she endeavored to describe this pain in graphic detail through her lyrics.
Her first song was called "Broken". A sad little song.
Her second song was titled "Wounded". Another sad little song.
I'm not sure what her third song was; perhaps it was "Maimed".
By this time, I was overcome by the secondhand smoke, and had to leave the room.
In addition, her songs were remarkably similar in tempo (that is to say, slow) and mood (that is to say, gloomy).
At any rate, the idea of writing an upbeat song seemed to be a foreign concept to this particular songwriter.
Now, there's nothing wrong with a sad song. Obviously there's a great deal that can be said for singing the blues. But even blues singers lighten up occasionally.
As for the other two singer songwriters, unfortunately, I can't remember a thing that they did.
Posted by leon at January 13, 2007 03:19 PM