OK... Sometimes, as a songwriter, you pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself on having just written the perfect couplet, the best ever rhyme, or just having written the most lucid, informative, and meaningful lyric EVER!!! Well, in reality, maybe once in your career you write a few words that you are so proud of, you seriously think about tattooing them on your body (What are mine, you ask...? Well, "it's gonna rain if you choose to live under a cloud") of course...
More likely, you strive to write something that touches someone just a little bit and makes them stand up even one time and take notice. Occasionally, you really get beneath the surface and resonate with someone who feels you have somehow lived their life for a short time.
Rarer still (in my experience at least...) and even more painful, you turn the tables on yourself, write a song about someone else and then slowly realise that you actually just described yourself... "Save you" is my example of this. Every line, every verse, every sentiment, comes right back to me. It's one of the most painful realisations I have discovered in writing songs... It reminds me of the time, when my son had just started driving, and a speeding fine came through the door for him. I stormed up the stairs and gave him the third degree about how stupid it was to speed and how he could lose his licence. 30 minutes later, he casually came downstairs, handed me the envelope back and said "it's actually yours, dad".. Oops!!!! Totally owned...
Well, "Save you" is one of those. Maybe it was just easier to put those emotions in someone else's world... It is not easy to realise that the words actually apply to you, when they say:
"Nothing ever makes you happy
Nothing brings you any light"
or
For all the sorry's that you never got to say
Because you didn't try..."
I have often said that song writing keeps me sane, protects my mental health and I truly believe that. I think that being able to express your feelings in a song releases the pressures that many people simply contain internally and allow to eat away at them. Even better, it offers perfect cover as the songs that reveal too much about yourself can just be hidden from view; only you ever hear them; they are safe from view but they have delivered their medicine so you feel better for them having been created (and then hidden). "Save you" is one that slipped through, I think. It is the one that reveals too much about me and is too painful to bear, but it is such a good song, I couldn't put it back in the drawer... It needed to be heard. Maybe I needed it to be heard, who knows?
It is not a happy song... The last words you hear are:
"Did you think love was going to save you?
So did I..."
It is not exactly hopeless but it does offer something. It maybe says that love can save you, but you need to work harder at it. The song's chorus ends with:
"Only you can make it right"
So it can be made right (right??), and that is a positive note... But reflect on yourself, accept you need to change, do things differently..... I haven't yet written the song that describes how to do this, but I am hoping it is a work in progress. I'll let you know if I get there...
Thanks for listening
Crispin x
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