You Belong to Me

You have now officially inserted yourself in many people’s heads, thanks to my play. But it’s a good song to get stuck in your head.

I want to write a song like this

Old-style, simple, classic song.

Writing like Fiona Apple

I’m in the process of writing a song (lyrics so far) like Fiona Apple, particularly like “Left Alone”, on Idler Wheel.  I feel weird about it because it’s not like anything I’ve written before, and the fact that I haven’t written a song in so long is a bit of a daunting task.  At the same time, I want to show my classmates that I’m actually a deep songwriter.  It goes back to my older songs, and how I wonder how I ever wrote them when I can’t even churn out a song now.

Anyway, we’ll see how it goes.  Wish me luck.

Fiona Apple setlist

Saw Fiona Apple in concert for the first time last night, and it was.

Amazing.

To say the least.  The videos on youtube don’t do it justice.  Nowhere near it.

I wrote down her setlist as she played.  Surprised at how many songs she played from When the Pawn… especially after the release of her new album (which is awesome).

Fast as You Can
On the Bound
Shadowboxer
Paper Bag
Anything We Want
Get Gone
Sleep to Dream
Extraordinary Machine
Werewolf
Tymps
Daredevil
I Know
Every Single Night
Criminal
Carrion
Not about Love

Encore:
It’s Only Make Believe (cover)

She didn’t talk much to the audience, which is a shame because I would’ve loved to hear her speak more.  Also, she re-interpreted “Not About Love” by screaming angrily “This is not about love/’cause I am not in love!” at that part, which was pretty surprising.

Anyway, awesome awesome show.  And to top it off, I got my seat upgraded from all the way in the back of the balcony, to row 18 on the floor.  Yeah!

And then we can do anything we want

I’ve listened to this a few times already, but just now, as I was hearing it again, it made me tear up.  The lyric “when we find some time alone”, leading up to the chorus, “And then we can do anything we want” is probably the cause of my oh-so-sensitive tear ducts.

Well, this is going to be my song for the day (read: I will now play this on repeat for the next 24 hours and will surprisingly not get tired of it).

 

Every single night’s a fight with my brain

When I posted that as my facebook status this morning, I got a message from a friend: “Every night is a fight with your brain? What do you mean?”

My response:

“That’s actually a lyric from a Fiona Apple song. I take it to mean that every night, I have to fight my brain to fall asleep because it keeps going and going and I can’t shut it up. More importantly, my brain takes the same paths, constantly reminding me of past events, associates things with people that dredge up memories that only cause pain and sadness. I used to succumb to my brain, but now I have to fight it every night just to not feel bad.”

Excuse me while I disappear…

Why happy music does not exist for me

A friend recently asked me, “Do you think some people just have sad souls?” (I forget the exact wording but something to that effect), referring to Kurt Kobain’s sad, angsty music.  I told him what Fiona Apple said about all music coming from angst.  (skip to4:36 for the start of the interview)

“Here’s what I think though: I only write when I’m angry or sad or something because that’s when I just have to write and I only will work if I absolutely have to.  If I’m having a good time and I’m happy and things are going really well, why would I want to stop what I’m doing to go and write at the piano?”

I feel like I’ve written about this before in a previous blog.  Hmm.  In any case, I tried to explain to my friend that maybe Kurt Kobain did have an eternally sad soul–I didn’t know him– but if we simply take a look at his/Nirvana’s music which may be sad, it’s not completely telling of his character.  I don’t believe he had zero happy moments in his life, but that, like me and like Fiona Apple, perhaps he simply wrote sad, angsty songs because he felt it was a way to let out his sadness, in order to feel good again.  And since so few of us in the world knew Kobain as a person, we might suggest through his songs and the subject matter of them that he was a sad soul, when it might not be the case.

We all pour out our feelings into something, to an extent, I think.

“Get Him Back” — Fiona Apple

I can’t seem to find the regular studio version of this song on youtube so here’s a live version.  It’s just as good, if not better.  🙂

30 Day Song Challenge: Day 21: A song that you listen to when you’re happy

“If I’m having a good time and I’m happy and things are going really well, why would I want to stop what I’m doing to go and write at the piano?”

Fiona Apple said these words during an interview with Craig Ferguson about songwriting and I feel the same way about listening to music while I’m in a good mood.  Why would I listen to a song when I’m happy instead of doing whatever makes me happy?  I may listen to a song which might make me feel happy but I don’t generally listen to a song when I’m happy.  Anyway!

Gotta abide by the rules.  So I went through my CD collection and didn’t really find anything so I turned to my favourites on youtube and found Mika’s “Relax, Take It Easy” which is a good song.  I never really liked “Grace Kelly” but his other songs are actually pretty catchy, which reminds me — I should probably pick up his CDs sometime.  Hmm.