Sunday, July 22, 2012

Song #217 of 9999 - Let Me In by Frankie Big Face

As mentioned in my previous post, I'm going to write about my own music for a few weeks as a way to get some song comments together for an updated website. My goal is eventually to have a few paragraphs written for every song on my website and I figured I'd start with all the Nur Ein songs I've written over the past six years. Nur Ein is a songwriting competition in the same vein as Song Fight!, wherein a title is presented each week and participants must write and record a song using that title. The songs are posted and listeners vote for their favorites. In the case of Nur Ein, there is a judging panel that ranks the songs and participants are eliminated each week until "only one" (nur ein) remains. There are also additional challenges that must be incorporated such as "lyrics in the form of a sonnet" or "guest rapper." Nur Ein has been around for seven years and I've entered four times and won twice. NBD. :D Let's begin.

===================================================================== 

Song #217 of 9999 

Title: Let Me In
Artist: Frankie Big Face
Year: 2007
Album: Nur Ein 2

 


One of the interesting things about writing songs very quickly and moving on to the next one is that you don't become very attached to the songs during the writing process. I find this makes it pretty easy to be objective about them later on and often they don't even feel like my songs. I play Let Me In a lot live so the song is pretty present in my mind but the recording is not. Listening to it now, I'm reminded about how much I resented incorporating the challenge of "uncommon percussion" but I really like it now. When I decided to write lyrics from a traveling salesman perspective, the footsteps seemed like a good fit. I put on some dress shoes and marked time on the tile floor in my old house. The poorly played mixing bowl is kind of charming in retrospect and the thumb piano that emerges after the harmonica solo is actually really nice.

I really like the lyrics of this song even if they were mostly "written" by my trusty rhyming dictionary. Words like "onion skin," "hairpin grin," and "adrenaline" just aren't on the tip of my tongue but once I find them I usually know what to do with them. I remember hesitating about the "faith-hope-love" chorus because I thought it may be a bit too closely related to a certain religious faith but then I figured these are pretty good concepts to promote anyway.

Tune in tomorrow for a much worse song! (I wish I were kidding.)

4 comments:

  1. I think the odd percussion is wonderful. And the melody is another strong one that will stick in my head. I don't think I would have guessed this was sung by a traveling salesman. I'm not even sure I like knowing it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, I mean it's not *literally* about a traveling salesman, but the lyrics do say "this is love I'm selling" and so on. Like 98% of my songs, it's a relationship song and the salesman concept is just a starting point. Or maybe an ending point. Who knows? But it led to shoes on tile which I think is a good thing. Glad you like the song.

      Delete
  2. I wish that it were true that writing songs quickly did not get you attached to songs. I suppose I am a little bit emo. I get attached to my own and to other people's songs quickly. This song made me smile when I first heard about it because it was what I think of as cinematically casual.
    DJRD

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! I'm not saying I never get attached to the songs I write quickly, but honestly, sometimes by week four I can't even remember what week one's song sounded like (even though just a few weeks earlier it would have been lodged in my brain like the most persistent ear worm). I don't know if this is what you mean by "cinematically casual" but I think the low-fi quality and quirkiness of the lyrics make this my song most likely to end up in a Wes Anderson film (in my dreams, of course).

      Delete