Leaving reality behind.

Making your true-to-life song their true-life song.

Your significant other from Poughkeepsie dumped you for a dog-walker and they both left in a Toyota for Atlantic City. You are of course heartbroken, but glad for a good excuse to write a song. You have a bad week or two, but you donít swear off of relationships forever. Instead you start making a list of prospective replacements. You do, however, swear off that type.

Sound like a real gripper of a plot? Not really, but it is a slice of life, which usually makes for bad songwriting. Sorry, all you citizens of Poughkeepsie, unless the song is a comedy, your version will never be heard.

If you really want the audience to be sympathetic of your plight and admiring of your newly-acquired will to go on, you must wrap it in a nice sounding package. You must, in short, step away from the truth and weave your story into more acceptable fiction.

Think for a moment; how many names did "Lucille" have before she picked a fine time to leave him? How many towns did the guy get to by the time he got to Phoenix? Did Green Day live on a Street of Broken Promises or a Road of Busted Plans before they sang about a Boulevard of Broken Dreams?

"Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" started life as "Gypsies, White-Trash and Thieves." Why the change? It sounded better.

Trying to rhyme Halifax may not be as easy as rhyming Tallahassee, so unless you are singing about a crab fisherman, change the locale.

Finding a voice for a lost school chum who moved to the other coast might not be punchy enough. Change the gender to meet the lost love type of song and cry your heart out.

When your first love dumped you, didn't you slightly alter the story to make yourself more sympathetic to your friends? Yes you did, even if you said you didn't. Well, do that for your song.

There is an old rule: We don't care about your life -- we care about our lives. We want to be moved. Write songs that move others -- not all about you.

Let's go to a well-known chorus, at least to me.

Wasting away again in Margaritaville
Searching for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that it's a woman to blame
But I think that it's nobody's fault*


Now, I don't know, but let's just pretend that Jimmy Buffet was in Rosarita Beach having a grand old time, a little hung-over and couldn't find his left shoe. Let's say that he was not shunting responsibility for his fate off on Nobody (later to be taken on by himself in a brilliant turn of chorus-making art). Let's say that the only woman involved with his vacation was the one he was trying to pick up in the lounge who wasn't going for it. Let's just assume all that is the case for a moment. Would that have made as good a song?

A little hung-over in Rosarita Beach
Looking for my left shoe
The only girl I see wants no part of me
And I guess it just could be my breath

You see? It's just not as punchy. It's dull and boringly true. What to do?

So he made up a name of a place that could be anywhere that tequila drinks are served and says he's wasting away there. He can't find his shaker of salt -- indispensable to such a lifestyle. He hints that people are talking about him, no doubt behind his back and in disparaging tones and intimating that there's a woman to blame. Of course, he just shrugs and says no one is to blame, later saying it just could be his fault and still later, that it's his own damn fault. By golly, he even makes it sound rogue-ish enough to make us want to go down there and be wasting away as well.

So, if the story you wrote does not move others, change it. If it didn't happen exactly that way, so what! I don't know that. I will buy whatever you tell me. Tell me in a colorful enough way and I will help to make it a classic standard the way Margaritaville is. Movies do it all the time. Those who read the book before a movie say things like, "Well that actually happened on three separate occasions and over two years time, not in one night like in the movie. So it really wasn't true to the book." In a book, you have 600 pages, no working budget and no time crunch. In the movie you have to get the story told as completely as possible in a couple of hours.

In a song, you have two verses, a bridge and a chorus occupying about three minutes. You really have no time for the truth. It can be boring and awkward.

You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!

Write fiction -- it is easier to swallow, it's more poetic, and it sells better.

Jon Batson
www.jonbatson.com
Author of The Songwriter's Hook Book at www.cdbaby.com/jonbatson3.
* Margaritaville is © by Jimmy Buffet.