Bubblegum

Sometimes it's scary trying new things. Like that first attempt at a bubblegum pop song I mentioned before.

Deal is, a song needs two components to be considered bubblegum:

1. Inane lyrics


2. Musical arrangement so catchy that you either don't notice the lyrics are stupid or you don't care

So I had to write something silly. But the music had to be good enough to both carry the silliness and make it seem on-purpose. Otherwise, listeners would just think, "Wow, that's dumb."

One line in particular nagged at me. I needed to rhyme the refrain "Dance to it." The best I could come up with was "Shake off your pants to it."

No, really. That's the line. It's not like I didn't try other rhymes. Other rhymes existed. They just weren't in keeping with the spirit of the song.

I decided to bounce it off people when I had a whole song to play for them. The way I figured it, either I'd failed miserably at this genre, or I'd succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.

* * *

I finished "Dance to It" late this afternoon. As it happened, there was going to be a Singer-Songwriters meetup just a few hours later. What better place for a trial run?

They loved it. They thought "Shake off your pants to it" was hysterical. "You can't get rid of that," one person said when I mentioned my reservations. "It's like the punchline."

So I'm keeping it for now. We'll see if Ron the Drummer laughs with it or at it at our next rehearsal.

Arrangement is everything

Every now and again, someone will tell me my songs are all depressing. While this isn't precisely true, it occurs to me that in over a decade of songsmithing, I've never written bubblegum pop.

Seems like something I should try at least once, right? So I've started. Here are the first two lines:

News on the radio
Tells stories of upheaval and despair

Yeah, this is gonna be great! Further updates as events warrant.