Tuesday, February 17, 2009

lyrics: 'Those Things You Said'

I recently turned this in for a project in my songwriting class, in which I was supposed to write an pop tune in AABA form.  I ended up getting marked down because since my "bridge" was in the same key as the rest of the piece, ended on the tonic and ended with the title, it was really a "chorus." I didn't feel like refuting my teacher, so I just looked him in the eye and said, "Ok."  I've labeled it "properly" below.  Enjoy.

Those Things You Said
By Jake Hawken

Verse One:
Call me a charlatan,
a player, or a libertine,
or call me a boring prude,
or any slander in-between,

Your epithets so stive
to validate your disposition
though I'm your voodoo doll du jour
it won't change your condition.

Verse Two:
I've become your whipping boy,
the scapegoat for your attitudes
for me to say you brought them on yourself
would be a platitude.

To justify your words
you seek to vilify my name,
it must be so much easier
to always shift the blame.

Chorus:
But those things that you said,
keep ringing in my ears,
and I can't shake the feeling
that it's because they're what I needed to hear
...those things you said....

Verse Three:
I really hope that you
get therapeutic benefit
from your antipathy
but can this please be the end of it?

Discouraged by your lack
of what I happen to possess,
well, if it helps you sleep at night
then blame me for your stress.

[CHORUS]

Bridge:
Those things you said to me,
I'm sure were said in enmity
and nothing else that I can see,
but I can't seem to let it be.

Forces tend toward entropy,
but this is an eternity,
Won't someone come and set me free
from all these things you said to me.

2 comments:

  1. It does kind of look like a chorus...

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  2. I have to agree...does kind of read like a chorus. I wouldn't presume to teach you anything about songwriting, but I would say that bridges are the place for the something different...a plot twist or some other kind new info. This bridge is just restating the chorus.

    However, I will give you bonus points for using the words "enmity" and "entropy". I had no idea those words were even allowed in pop songs.

    I keed, I keed.... :o)

    Aaron

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