One Way Or Another

My all time favourite song review came from a friend, Murray Webster, who later founded London Songwriters to teach songwriting skills to others. He knows his coffee beans. After laying my very soul on the line, as we do every time we sing a new song to anybody, other than ourselves in the shower, he responded with the immortal "WTF was that?"

And he definitely had a point from a critique point of view. That song returned to the great Song Recycling Plant in the depths of my subconscious, never to surface again.

However, as time goes by, I become more inclined to measure the value of a song by those kind of reactions. There are a hell of a lot of nice songs out there. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with nice. A pleasant life with nice background music isn't a life to be sniffed at. It's something to aspire to, especially when we've had our struggles.

But surely anything we do creatively is done for some kind of attention. To make a mark. To say "I woz here!".

Punk made people go "WTF was that!". Many meant it negatively, but for others it was a breath of fresh air that helped them to find new meaning and purpose. To feel that their lives mattered too.

Maybe we should be writing more songs that make people care. One way or another.