Hello I'm
Thomas Wilson.I have fierce opinions about songwriting and what makes a good song. I think that many songwriters write mostly terrible lyrics and I want this to change. I named this workshop the Forge to represent the fierce fire of criticism, but also how the fire can strengthen and refine one’s mettle. Nevertheless, I will do my best to be thoughtful and considerate; and to prove this to you, I will give a little introduction to show you, among other things, I am just another lame wannabe rock star, like most of you songwriters out there.
Just around the time I first picked up a guitar at 14, I also became too self-conscious to sing solo. I honestly thought that I had the prospects of being, if not the next
Jimi Hendrix, at the very least the next Eric Clapton. I still loved singing and sang in the concert choir at my high school in grade 10, but was booted out for grade 11 – the year the choir was going on tour. In the audition I was so shy I could hardly croak out a note. It was not until I was 20 years old that I singing again, secretly when no one was home, mostly learning Tom Waits and Prince covers. When I was visiting home this past summer I found some of the songs I that scrawled at the time – I’m rather glad that I was much too embarrassed to attempt performing them at the time. If you think you have written bad songs, I am certain that I have written worse.
Throughout my life I have been interested in creative writing, both poetry and prose. I received very good encouragement from my creative writing teachers at the University of Winnipeg, and I could tell that I was among the best writers in my classes. I wanted to write songs, for I played guitar daily and I thought I was adept, but it did not come easily.(As a side note: for Adv Creative Writing, my prof. was Catherine Hunter, who taught John K. Sampson of the
Weakerthans the previous year. He tributes her in various places. Please, if you wish, discuss whether John K. Sampson is not the most over-rated songwriter in Canada.) I have followed my love of literature to a Master’s Degree in English which I completed this past year.
All art needs form, it requires some structure or genre for the listener to grab onto. For me, gradually, I began to find structures in “folk” music to hold my songs. (And please do not think of folk music as
namby-
pamby idealism or
wishy-washy sentimentalism! It is impossible to think this while listening to Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and most early Pete
Seeger.) About two years ago I started writing at a rapid rate – once I had a musical structure and a lyrical idea, I merely had to work on the words until the song was satisfactorily performable.
With my wife Sarah, I perform in a duo. She is my fire because she critiques my songs and burns the chaff and helps me re-write them. We released a CD this summer (2007) called Love Songs and Sinner Ballads. A love song is of course the most self-evident
cliché in songwriting – though the love song gives a structure we can understand, when it follows every convention it becomes boring and meaningless. The “sinner ballad” is my own rendering of a mostly forgotten folk-style called the “murder ballad”. This second part of the title, hopefully, counter-balances the meaningless
cliché of “love songs”, in the same way that I try to overcome
cliché in actual songs on the album by singing of love founded in a confession of weakness (sin). I believe
clichés and pop formulas are necessary for good songwriting, but we must also be wary of the emptiness of a
cliché, especially if we seek to write profoundly meaningful songs.
Please you songwriters respond to this introduction! Disagree vehemently (or meekly) with me. Explain what you think is the place of a
cliché in good songs. Do good songs require a genre? Does a songwriter really need to be able explain (as I have done with my CD title) what every word of his/her songs mean?
Post your questions and thoughts on songwriting using our comment section. This is your forum, you songwriters – use it!
