Sad songs

How Emotion and Music Intersect

This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, and so I’ll state this up front, and then give you some additional thoughts: Good music is not meant to express emotion; good music IS meant to create emotion. I want to tell you a bit more about this. To say that a good song […]

Worried

Taking Care and Helping Others

You’d be forgiven for thinking that we’re living in scary times right now. The media, both official and social, have a way of making it almost impossible to not obsess over it all. You literally cannot turn on the radio or watch network TV and not be watching something about COVID-19. That kind of saturation makes […]

Bob Dylan

Your Songs: Do You Have Anything Interesting To Say?

If you’ve got the gift of gab, you’ve an an ability to engage others in conversation and to keep them interested. If you think about the people in your life that you love having a conversation with, the following statements are probably true: They find interesting things to talk about. They can speak eloquently. They […]

Amanda McBroom

Controlling the Emotional Build of a Verse-Only Song

Some songs make use of a verse-only construction, and Bette Midler’s hit “The Rose” (written by Amanda McBroom) is a good example of this. There are other songs that are mainly verse-only, with a short one-line refrain, like Lennon & McCartney’s “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Those two song formats, verse-only and verse-refrain, both have […]

Protest march

Is Music Just a Fancy Version of “Thoughts and Prayers”?

As a Canadian — and because this is a songwriting blog — I haven’t had a lot to say about American politics. And believe me, there’s a lot one can say. I align myself firmly with those who are deeply concerned about what is happening in the U.S. “Extreme vetting” is a dangerous doorway to the […]