“Well done is half begun.”

Okay, well…I did threaten you all with a post by the end of the week, and as the week is very nearly over, here is that post.  And—as I threatened—I am hereby embedding five original songs that I have up on YouTube, which to be are just begging to be the first half (not necessarily in this order) of a potential album…though it’s possible that listeners may be begging me, “No more!  Please!”

Schrodinger’s Head

This is the song that started me off of lately on my kick of writing, performing, and arranging my songs.  Though it was the most recently REDONE of these songs, it was the first original one that I recorded, mixed, and posted.  However, in its origins, it’s the second most recent of my songs overall, having started as a playful bit of banter at the office.  It’s also the most light-hearted one.  The rest get a bit dark.  No one who knows me will surely be surprised.

Come Back Again

The lyrics to this song (including some mystery, hidden lyrics that are inaudible under the opening “aah”s) are either the oldest or the third oldest, and the basic tune is also pretty much the third oldest of the songs here.  The lyrics, from a poem I wrote in college, are probably older than any of the next or the last song below.  The tune, though, is definitely only third oldest.

Catechism

This is the oldest full song, in that I made up the lyrics and the tune at the same time, a very long time ago…but I never actually had it written down (well, I wrote the lyrics down when I made them up, but God knows where that paper ended up), I just remembered it.  And I DID change a few of the lyrics before performing, producing, and recording the song, but not many.  The opening and bridge guitar solos, however, are completely new.  This is the second most lighthearted of this handful of songs.  It even contains the line “The world is not so hopeless, is it now?” which doesn’t sound like me at all!  ^_^

“Like and Share”

This is definitely the most recent song, start to finish.  It began life as a response to (and refutation of) a sentiment I perceived at the time:  the idea that everyone in the world had to be the same, that we were all  fundamentally and utterly alike, and so on.  But that didn’t quite ring true as something people were really saying, so it morphed into a song about the dark side of social media.  The final version was triggered (if you’ll pardon the term) by the story of a young lady who was a mid-level Instagram “star” and model who ended up committing suicide over a drop in her “likes”.  I’m sure there was more than these superficial facts to the story—I’m sure she had other things going on in her life besides social media that led to her very sad end.  But social media didn’t help.

Breaking Me Down

This is the second oldest of my songs here, overall, though a portion of the lyrics were changed from their original forms (for the better, I promise…some of the originals were a bit forced and almost laughably awkward).  Like Catechism, this song—words and music—has been rattling around my head since the late eighties or early nineties, and finally saw light of day, so to speak, within the last year.  It went through three or four iterations (of zero?) before I got it into a form with which I was satisfied.  It is, as I like to think of it, a song about depression that you could dance to, if you were so inclined.

These have been the five original songs of mine posted on YouTube, and I’m working (slowly) on some others, but I’d love to receive your feedback in the meantime.

And, finally, I can’t resist putting in a link here (but not embedding the video) to my cover of Something, by the Beatles.  It’s one of my favorite songs, and I’m pretty happy with how my version turned out.  But of course, I do not in any way own this song, and I have no right to make any money off it (and, of course, I am not making any money from it).

Thanks for “watching” and listening!