But the use of a more visual theme can actually focus the emotion through something visual. By that, I mean, how many songs do we know about war? You know, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. A religion, my own private Jesus Depeche mode. What if God was one of us? Joan Osborne, that losing my religion, REM, my sweet Lord, George Harrison. There’s a, it allows you to, to have a subtext in a song, and it also allows your song to be very visual. So you can write songs about rain.
I do a whole workshop, a whole lecture on using rain as a subject matter for songs. The Eurythmics. Here Comes The Rain again. Have a, have a think about how different the vocal tone of, Annie Lennox singing. Here Comes The Rain, again, is to George Harrison. Here comes The Sun. There’s a lightness in George Harrison’s voice that, is the pro at play. There’s a strong use of, of, of, major chords. the Eurythmics here Come.
The Rain again, has his minor key, has a melancholic tone to the delivery. Light and shade. Both those songs, space is a good one. David Barry, space Oddity, pink Floyd, dark Side of the Moon, interstellar Overdrive. Lots of songs. Lots of songs about gravity, things like this. So it allows a different kind of contrast where one, it switches the focus of your narrative to something else in the song, rather than you talking about yourself all the way through the song, which is not a bad thing.
But I wanna look at Rivers today as subject matter. it’s a great, it’s a great topic to channel your song through. Oh, and I want you to, to think about this and also what, while you’re thinking about it, devis an appropriate musical style that supports the lyric. So, songs associated with rivers. Let me open the chat again. Let me see who could possibly bgan songs about rivers.
Take me to the river. Big River, Crimea River, rivers of Babylon, the river. Bruce Springsteen, rivers of Eden. Peter Gabriel River of Dreams River man, Nick, Nick Drake. Yes. Fallen out pretty reckless. Moon River, old man. River, river. Take me, I like the type of that river, deep mountain, high crime crime.
Me River, yes. Yellow River from Christie, by Christie, rolling on the river. That’s not tight of the song, but, but you know what I mean. Okay. So you get the message that, okay, we can stop the River songs. Now you’ve beat me, you know, thousands more river songs than I do. it’s a great, subject to channel a lyric through. It allows contrast because when you, when you reach the chorus, a lot of the times, the, the river Comes into play in the chorus of the song.
It, it, it, it allows you lyrically to step out your narrative and to use a sense of emotion. like, it, it, it comes up with keywords, if you like. When, when you write about river, a river can evoke a lot of key keywords. It can be absolution, you know, bathe me in these rivers. It can, it can have it falling in love by the river. It gives you a sense of place. It can be a metaphor or a simile. it, it, it, it can represent addiction, danger, dreams, escape, cleansing.
It’s a setting for a story. You can never step in the same river twice. You can never listen to the same song twice in the same way. Emotion change, it’s universal, and all rivers reach the sea. Okay, so why should we do this? Why, why should we not just remain in the song ourselves? It takes you, or rather it gives you an ability to step out the song, which the, this is my word called empathy fatigue, which is when you, you are dealing with an emotional subject and you are in the verse, and you are also in the chorus.
You’re describing your situation through the verses, and you are, you are describing your situation. In the chorus, you get into an I will always love you kind of thing, which works in that setting of the song. But sometimes you can, you can get what is known as emotional empathic fatigue, which is like, when there’s too much of you in the song. So using the river is a great way of evoking the emotion of a chorus, okay? It also brings in what is known as the universal element.
So rather than the song being about you, the first person, rivers are universal. So it allows the song to suddenly open up and get, get, get wide in, in your songwriting. Lemme move this. It allows a different language to be used. It’s, it’s very important to always moving away from the telling, in Nashville, right? For Nashville, which a lot of country songs, use the river ’cause they invoke a lot of nature. and, metaphors for that in, in, especially in Right For Nashville.
So there’s a saying in Nashville called Show Don’t Tell, which I like to do that not all the way through the song, but occasionally they don’t really want to hear too much about you and how you’re feeling. Use the verses for that, the verse for your narrative and storytelling, the chorus for your emotion. Okay? It allows metaphor, it allows illusion, it allows, similarly, you can shift the focus to the river itself of your chorus.
Also, it allows the verse to focus on the storytelling, the setting of the scene, the place, the time, the plot, the characters, and the chorus then becomes an emotional center via the river. we all know this, we all talk about contrast. Sometimes contrast is difficult to, to actually bring into the lyric writing of a song because you, you, you, you’re in the narrative. You want To, to tell this story. But using something like rivers or rain, or sun is a great, is a great way of painting a picture in the listener’s mind that is outside of your own head.
Sometimes we assume that listeners know our narrative. They know the personal narrative we’re talking about. They know the character who’s ditched us, or, or, well, they don’t, but they do know the universal elements of the sun, the river, the rain. They do know these things. So sometimes bringing this into a song is a very good thing to do. Okay? there’s, they like, I like this. They, they, they reveal a rare ev evocative resemblance.
Rivers of music exist in the same four dimensions, but they are utterly unique in every moment. Now, if you think about that, it’s true. A river is constantly changing. You can’t freeze frame a song like you can a piece of art, picture, photograph, painting. You can’t look at the song in its entirety. Neither can you look at a river in its entirety. It’s a constantly flowing thing. So I do like that it’s very poetic. there is a lovely blog here.
I’ll, I’ll attempt to give you these, links as well at some, at some point. lemme just share this with you. We should have switched now to this thing. Okay? this is just a simple blog that takes us through songs about places, water, rain, and rivers. Fantastic. Very, very, very, I guess folk oriented. This is, which is, which is a great idiom for singing the river songs. you hear the threat of rising water in older songs like Trinity River Blues, five Feet High in Rising, as well as news new songs like Floodplains, which is a beautiful song.
I’ve forgotten the name of the girl who sings it, but I did use it as an example in my Old River, workshop. But speaking to the lovely and hands up, who all loves Shelly Pool here, speaking to the lovely Shelly Pool, this morning, actually. Ha that’s it. You’ve all raised your hands. Okay, enough love for Shelly. Enough love for Shelly. No, red, and you stop.
It’s like that Shelly, played me a song that she’d written with, with Red Sky July, which I thought was a, was a much better song than the, than Floodplains. So I’ve, I’ve used the lovely Shelly’s song as an example in, in, in exchange of that, again, this is the quote I took. The, the, the rare evocative resemblance rivers of music exists in the same four dimensions, but they’re utterly unique in every moment. No man ever steps in the same river twice for, it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man.
The same can be said for any song performed live. As any musician knows, every single moment of the song is different. They also provide a geographic cornerstone. anyone who’s listened to songs by Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young songs who, who write about the bigger picture, that that’s a great way of, of, of, of, of writing to the bigger picture.
