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Hop On Pop
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2/19/2008 6:57:09 AM
Songs that you wrote around a song title.
You know... you just came up with this great TITLE, but had no song for it. So you wrote one.
How many of those do you have? Which ones are they?
Here's a chance for all you little self-promoters to self promote and tell a little story about your songs. As for me:
"Nine At a Time"
is a song over at the Cash Cow page that is an example of just such a song. I was driving down the highway on my way to school from home. There was a mile marker sign on I-57 that stated "9 miles" to somewhere that I didn't care about. And the phrase "Nine At a Time" popped into my head.
I carried that around with me for a year or so, before I actually got around to writing the song, but when it came out, I was pretty proud of it; sort of a punk/metal/country/screamo hybrid:
Another Cash Cow song "Wasted Time" happened in sort of the same way. I was thinking about that phrase and then it occured to me that when I was stoned or drunk, that was "wasted" time, in that I was wasted.
I had that phrase with me for only a week or so, though before I wrote that song.
Sadly, the band that means the most to me, Hop On Pop, has nothing to pimp in this thread, as all those titles came FROM the songs, themselves, instead of the other way around.
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srm
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2/19/2008 7:25:13 AM
Well, the music was already written, but the lyrics to "Smells Like Pork (tastes like chicken) definitely came about from the title phrase. It was one that circulated among the members of a band I was in, to sum up a situation that was not exactly as it appeared. Of course the lyrics are a nonsense; so I guess it was just an excuse to stick that phrase on a song.
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RedRobin
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2/19/2008 7:39:20 AM
For me the title always comes after the song is first recorded and never before because I never know what I'm going to play - Not even the next note! I guess it's the instrument I play coupled with no knowledge of music theory that makes it that way.
Obviously I play on other artist's songs they have already written and titled. Though I changed friend Hum's song title from "Even On The Greyest Day" to "Smile Like A Child" with his total blessing when we recorded it.
The song usually inspires a title, no matter how silly, and then the title sometimes gets changed as the song nears completion in mixing/arranging etc.
[srm - I assume my ESON CD arrived safely]
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Andy Broad
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2/19/2008 7:40:52 AM
The title track from my first CD falls into that category. I was doing the washing up, a rare enough occurrence :-), and the title for my CD popped into my head, so I thought I'd better right a song about it. It came out straight away, I sung it straight out whilst finishing the washing up, and drying my hands so I could get to my guitar. Hmmm maybe I ought to upload so you can listen to it ... hang around be back in a while.....
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GREAT CENTRAL
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2/19/2008 8:04:08 AM
i think, lyrically, the title is very often the starting point for me; of the songs i currently have up, the latest two "the coach trip" and "god, please let's end this this way" both sprang from the titles, although 'god, please...' is a blatant steal from brian wilson's 'god, please let's go on this way'...
"mosaic boy" (or mozayk bwoyee, to give it the correct title) came from the way a friend pronounced the two words, and i thought it was a great image for a song - the reason for the title change was a JAWZ suggestion, based on the idea that no one would understand?
"5 or so years" again came from something someone said to me, the whole idea for the lyric in fact sprung from just that one simple question: where do you see yourself in 5 or so years...
good thread H/O/P... :thumbs up:
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Andy Broad
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2/19/2008 8:11:47 AM
... back here it is From The Roots On Down
Got to rush now, got a phone about a wedding gig whilst uploading, people asking for blues at their wedding can't be made to hang around, they are too rare a beast!
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Jeff Allen Myers
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2/19/2008 10:19:13 AM
I wrote the music to anothers lyric that was posted in a writers room on the net. The title of the song came from a phrase in her lyrics, it was a small line in a verse. I worked these lines around and it became the chorus of the song with the hook and Title. The phrase just reached out to me so I wrote around it. It was not the name of the song she had, or the chorus (I can't remember what she called it).
The name of the song is "Between the Real World and Nowhere".
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Gary Stockton
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2/19/2008 3:54:45 PM
I wrote one called Verity.
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J. Patrick Sharpe
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2/19/2008 8:15:17 PM
I have written many songs this way-- title first and everything falls into place. Examples-- Who Pissed in Your Corn Flakes, God Complex, Circles in the Grass, Doughnuts and Coffee to name a few. Here's a quick story on a song I wrote called Life's A Bowl of Pork Chops. I was walking through downtown Washington D.C. and ran across this advertisement on a bus stop. It said, "Life's a Bowl of Pork Chops." It stopped me in my tracks. At first I was standing there scratching my head thinking, "What the hell does that mean?" This was during that whole Pork the Other White Meat campaign, you know where pork seems to have some sort of inferiority complex. But, of course, after a minute or so the songwriter in me sort of took over, 'cause everything sounds like a potential title for a song when you're a songwriter (it's almost an illness). I stood there for a few minutes and took a good look around me. Wasn't real crazy about what I saw to be honest. I started walking again. I only had to go about 10 blocks and I swear I had all the lyrics done by the end of that walk. The bitch is that I had to try to remember them all day until I got home and picked up my guitar. I've lost many tunes this way, but this one didn't get away from me. To this day I'm not really crazy about the title of the song, but I can't shake the images that sprang from reading that sign. For what it's worth...
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Kevin White
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2/20/2008 6:57:09 AM
I've one ... sort of.
I was in the middle of forming a germ of a guitar riff into a song, back when Jane Pauley left the morning show and started her own prime time show called, "Real Life".
I liked the on of the show's segments, and both concept and title became my tune, "Real Life".
http://iacmusic.com/songs.aspx?SongID=55182&ArtistID=66337
Best,
Kev-
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srm
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2/20/2008 7:19:29 AM
On second thought (I take a long time between thoughts), "Family Values" was written around the title. The term should tell you how old the tune is.
http://iacmusic.com/songs.aspx?SongID=28432&ArtistID=35602
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LyinDan
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2/20/2008 9:09:31 AM
As I was dipping an old girl's toothbrush in the toilet, I thought to myself, "Hmmm, girl, you better boil it", and added the obvious couplet to that. That song title germinated for a few years before I fleshed it out (no pun intended) and wrote the song while on a vacation drive.
Girl You Better Boil It
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