lyric

LYRICS

See also how to write lyrics [external].

I have quite a few notebooks, some extremely battered, with scores and scores of lyrics scribbled in them. I've long since lost count of how many I've written over the years, though I have also used a lot. I now also have a backed up virtual lyric book on my mobile phone where I can't lose it.

I've written all sorts of lyrics, the vast majority not about relationships. As Mick Jagger reportedly once said, it's funny where you get your ideas from. These are just a few to give you a flavour of just how odd this stuff is.

The Hokey Croaky. This is vintage me, completely off the wall and full of wry black humour. The gist of it is that people with illnesses routinely get the brush-off from doctors, and some of them may actually be more ill than the doctors realise. The lyric is partly based on "The Hokey Cokey" reportedly written around 1940 though who by seems to be disputed. There seem to be various theories about what the original lyric was actually about. The earliest known version of it seems to go back even further, to 1857 and a song then called "Right Elbow In".

C'est La Vie (That's bloody life). This was triggered by another song by someone else that prompted me to write a spoof. I haven't been able to trace the original, though the rhythm of much of what I wrote is the same as the other song so you might spot which one it was. I vaguely remember something about someone starting a rock and roll band, but I can't now find it. It isn't the one by Boston, or Van Morrison.

Biscuit Shovel. This was a spoof Hugh Lawrie lyric. I had been due to play in a chess match, which had been rearranged as the other team hadn't turned up before. I went out to play at the rearranged match, and after some pacing up and down and reading a book, they didn't turn up again [If you're wondering, some while later it was re-arranged a second time, and this time they did turn up]. I drove back home, listening to a Hugh Lawrie CD. A little while later, while idly thinking about it, I thought maybe I could write a spoof of that kind of lyric basically taking the mickey, and it just came. I don't know why I called the character Biscuit Shovel, the line just came to me (as so many have)... "There's a man called Biscuit Shovel, he's got the blues..."

Immigration shuffle. It was wet one lunchtime at work, so I sat on a bench rather than go for my customary walk. I thought that it would be a good opportunity to write a lyric, but that there was nothing particularly that I wanted to say. Then I thought idly of having had my hair cut a couple of days earlier by a Russian, who had told me that her best friend was a Czech. Then, almost without effort, it started coming... "I heard it from a Russian, that he'd heard from a Ukranian, who said that he had got it from a Pole..."

The day I wrote this song. Written at Newquay. We were at a cafe round the side from a courtroom tourist attraction. They were playing music. I think it must have been a 70s CD. One of the songs was about a river, and seemed to neatly refer to itself in terms of what the writer would always feel every time they heard the song. It was a good song, and apart from how catchy it was I also liked the circularity. I decided to write something along similar lines, and this was the result. In it the narrator reflects on various things that happened after he wrote the song containing the reflections.

I wouldn't know. I started writing this in Brussels, and completed it after I got back. We were in a square. There was a female guitarist busking. She was facing the other way, and some distance, so I only heard the guitar and the tone of the voice. I started wondering what she was singing about. I imagined her as a sort of Joan Baez cum Joni Mitchell folk protest singer, and duly wrote that kind of lyric for her, although for all I know she could have been singing about something else entirely.

Banana and his electric dog. I'm not really sure where this came from. It reads like a throw-back to the style of That's odd, although it does owe something to Simon Smith and his amazing dancing bear (a hit for the Alan Price Set in 1967, although it wasn't their song).

I wish (I could tell you). I wrote this immediately after seeing the film A mighty wind which contained the song A kiss at the end of the rainbow. I suppose it started me thinking about beginnings and endings, and too much water under the bridge. I was wiping tears away at one point.

Carolling, or, Good old dad. I was sitting in a hotel room in Croatia trying to think of what to write, and for several minutes nothing came. Then for some reason I remembered my dad shouting at some carol singers to clear off, and I started pondering on a spoof Christmas song. As soon as I thought of it I knew it would work.

Fraulein Fi. Written in Croatia, this turned into one of my very best songs. For some reason I was thinking about my dad being embarassed (as he wasn't a great socialiser), and then I was thinking about a Bavarian beer evening, with steins being waved, and various parts of the anatomy being slapped in time with some bawdy song or other... and then I wondered what the lyrics might be. That was it, that was enough.

Read the manual. This started on holiday. The lyric describes a device of some sort that was broken, despite an attempt to repair it, though it carefully doesn't say what it is. Some of it sounds like something out of the TV show Last of the Summer wine. For any curious people out there, the original jiggerypoke was actually a ventilation fan.

Ain't it always. A very strange lyric, quite unlike me, about a character with a dark, devious side who is persuaded to reform. Even the language isn't like me; it reads like something written by someone else.

Lord. This must have been Charlie Rich influenced, as it was written virtually immediately after I heard his famous 1973 album Behind closed doors. It's a spoof gospel lyric in which someone is grateful for how God has looked after him, although it becomes clear as it goes on that in fact his life has been one long catalogue of disasters.

Funny. This is a really weird lyric that came just after a shower, while I was thinking about the fact that I don't find set piece humour funny. It's a sarcastic dietribe against comedy as a genre. I've never seen anything like this lyric anywhere else before. Someone did write to me about it: "LOL What's with that?"

Everybody's talking. This was triggered by of all things something a footballer (I believe a goalkeeper) shouted out during a match - "Everybody's been talking". I had no idea what he meant, although talking may have meant calling for the ball, that is asking the goalkeeper to give it to them. It was such an odd phrase for a football match that it lodged in my mind, however it wasn't until the following morning that it occurred to me that it could be a song title. I could only see one way to make it work, although 'been' got dropped as it was easier to get the stressing to work without it. I wasn't trying to make any particular point, although I did borrow from reality to an extent purely because it was easier.

Pebbles in a jar. This was a really strange one. It came from a dream. In the dream, I was listening to the radio, radio 4 or something, and somewhat unexpectedly it's interrupted by an announcement saying something like, the Welsh service will now follow on this frequency. It cuts to what sounds like a church or possibly a hall, and a presenter introduces a piece of music in a desperately earnest voice. For some strange reason the title, which is intoned even more earnestly, is in English: "Gabbledy gabbledy gobbledy gobbledy gabbledy 'Pebbles in a jar'." A late middle aged male singer then starts singing it (in a language that sounds more like German) with an acoustic guitar backing. It sounds fairly introspective and miserable. He gets about two lines through it and then I wake up. I was so struck by this that I wrote the lyric while I was having breakfast.

Stick insect blues. Written at Bluewater shopping centre. This came from pure chance - I happened to hear a blues song on Jazz radio station while hunting through channels. I thought, if I was to write another blues song, it would be something like, oh I don't know, someone's a bit sad as his pet stick insect has just died. That was enough. I wrote a verse of it fairly quickly and the rest of it I think a day later.

Queer as folk. This is a spoof folk lyric inspired by a folk evening on the last day of the holiday in which the group played what sounded like exactly the same tune about fifteen times.

Drop dead. Written in Portugal. This is a caustic tirade at boring people. I don't quite know what triggered it although I think the punchline came first.

A wee drink. I'm not quite sure where this one came from. It's obviously about drink, but it has a kind of innocence about it as I don't drink a lot. It's also wryly funny if you like that kind of humour.

Smokey river. Standard format blues lyric about a hard drinking aging character sensing that his time is becoming short. There has already been a song with this name, that appeared on a folk album in 1965, but I don't believe that I'd heard it when I wrote my lyric. There has also been a band called the Smokey River Boys, and a tobacco shop in Belgium called Smokey River, but again I'd never even heard of either of them until I did a web search after writing my lyric. I have no idea where the phrase smokey river, which in my lyric is the protagonist's nickname, came into my mind from.

Cotton fields. Obviously strongly influenced by the novel A painted house by John Grisham, this lyric has a now very comfortably off man musing about how he learned everything he knew on his parents' cotton fields as a kid, although it becomes clear as it goes on that he's done nothing of the kind.

What isn't going on. Started off vaguely inspired by Marvin Gaye's What's going on, but clearly more English than that. For some reason it took a lot longer to write than my lyrics usually do.

Get down (to the doctor). This started coming after seeing a detective story set in a psychiatric home. It's a very strange and intriguing lyric, apparently a rebuke to a man who has treated a woman badly. I later thought it was influenced by the break up with ex four, though the date suggests not because the break up (though clearly looming) hadn't happened yet.

Dig those crazy climate change email blues (later retitled Climate changes). Triggered by a news story about the East Anglia University climate research unit. A large number of emails, I believe over a thousand, came to light, and some of them apparently showed some discussion of what should or should not be public knowledge.

Gordy baby. Spoof 60s style song about the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown and how 'grateful' we all are that he 'saved' the country and the world. The original idea was to have a love song about him sung by Diana Ross and the Supremes.

The company song. Parody of industrial policy.

The five million dollar duck. This obviously owes something to homeopathy, and superficially appears to be a sarcastic attack on it, but also has surreal elements. Triggered by a few phrases that came to me as I was getting up i.e. still drowsy.

Numpty of the year. The singer is very proud that his father has been awarded the title of "Numpty of the year" by locals who for some reason that the singer doesn't understand find this very amusing. Obviously heavily influenced by the Scottish woman I was seeing at the time. Numpty is a Scottish word that I hadn't come across until she used it.

Old. A character has a nightmare in which he dies and then gets told by St Peter that he's got there too late and is just too old to get in. He ponders gloomily about being old. The whole thing has a very black humour about it.

Englebert Humperdinck (or not). I wondered out of curiosity if I could write a lyric with "Englebert Humperdinck" in every line, so I had a go. I didn't quite do it - one line only had Englebert, and another didn't have either part of the name - but 23 lines out of 25 isn't bad, don't you think?

When you've got to go. Spoof statement by an MP announcing he is standing down following an expenses scandal, despite not believing that he's done anything wrong.

Was that it? Yet another sarcastic song, this time about people full of strong but worthless opinions.

Fort William. Sarcastic song about the alleged merits of this Scottish highlands, erm, resort. Mostly written while I was actually there.

Answers on a postcard please. Strange lyric, largely an attack on the music industry for being unoriginal.

The Englbert Humperdinckness of it all. The title to this came first, the rest of it turned out to be very philosphical.

Farewell. Another death song, this one loosely based on a terminally ill character played by Clint Eastwood in the film Honky tonk man.

Something about a garden. Send up of a Stevie Nicks lyric. Title may get changed.

Fine. (I considered calling this "hamster trouble".) Sarcastic parody of crime fiction, inspired by the TV programme Jonathan Creek.

Hallelujah, Praise the Lord. Yet another oddball sarcastic lyric, this time with political overtones.