I got an IM not too long ago that told me my songwriting sucks, in much more colorful terms. First of all, I have no idea how he got my AOL name, but I can get over that. I just want your opinion.
If you could kindly go to www.poetry.com search for Aaron Parrish (my middle name is Lee), and then come back here and give your opinion, I would be very thankful.
In light of that, I thank you in advance.
[fixed link-Czarcasm]
Aw, why does this always have to happen to me?
I couldn’t reach www.poetry.com, but I found some of your stuff here
Aaron, it sucks.
In colourful terms, it sucks badly.
I hope that’s another Aaron Parrish, that way you won’t have to hate me for saying it.
I am so sorry.
Maybe they work fine as song-lyrics though, I’d have to hear the songs (though please don’t invite me to do so, 'cause if they suck too, I’d have to tell you, then you’d probably have to take a contract out on me or something).
Truly, truly sorry.
It all depends on what you’re writing them for. If you are writing them because you enjoy writing, or to express your love for your Special Someone, then they don’t have to be perfect, and you should definitely continue writing. You will probably get better through practice, and I think the one you love will be touched by them.
If you’re writing them to make money by selling them or singing them professionally, then you aren’t quite there yet. That doesn’t mean you have to give up, but you have a long way to go.
You’ll have to decide if you want to keep practicing and writing. Writing well takes a long time and is hard work.
One way to improve your style is by reading, not just song lyrics, but also poetry. Look closely at the poems you like. What makes them work? What do you like about them? The more you read, the better your writing will become.
As a further note, you probably shouldn’t get too depressed by the opinions of anyone who IMs you to tell you that you suck. Whoever it is, he or she does not probably have your best interests in mind. Only a mean person does that kind of thing.
I may be wrong, but if you are the Aaron Parrish The Great Unwashed referred to – try not to put an AOL name on a website if you want it confidential. Aside from that – your lyrics aren’t that bad. Just different.
Ummm… not that I’m any great songwriter or anything, but I’ve been doing it for a while now, so… Usually when I read lyrics I can get a feel for the rhythm even without ever hearing the song. If I had a suggestion to make, it would be to work on that rhythm. Aside from not making a whole lot of sense, your work didn’t seem to flow very well.
That’s just my opinion tho’.
You also apparently stole some of your lyrics ((not sure if it was intentional or not)) from this cd by Live.
JimSox, I agree that you should keep writing and experimenting with what works. You have room for improvement, but “sux” is not the word for it, I think.
I’ll admit that I’m not great or anything. I just thought I was better than “sux”. That link that George provided us was stuff from my 8th grade year, and I didn’t even realize that the site was still up. And I especially didn’t realize that I had posted my AOL name. God, I was stupid. Anyway, I did not intentionally steal my lyrics from Live, the only CD I have of them is The Distance to Here. I apologize to anybody this offended. Also, I don’t sell my songs professionally, it’s just something I do when I’m either pissed off or depressed. Or to a special someone every now and then. But nothing for sale.
Anyway, thank you for your honest opinion.
I’m in general agreement here, but I think in a couple of them, specifically “Juggler” and “Oasis Told Us So,” you were pushing toward something novel and good. These two seemed to approach an understanding of the complexity of life and love and such, but then pulled back before they really started to explore it.
To try to give a more constructive take: Most of them are very straightforward and take a pretty simplistic, black-and-white view of the world. Life, and especially romance, are incredibly complex; that’s why people are still creating poems and songs and movies and plays and novels and paintings and sculptures and I-don’t-know-what-all about them after all these millennia.
Also, you use imagery that I’ve seen so often I almost don’t recognize it as metaphor. “Deafening silence,” for example, or anything about “until the stars fall.”
I only read about half of them at random, so for all I know the other half are worthy of Yeats or Tom Waits. Keep plugging at it; the good it does you is in sticking to it, not in creating masterpieces.
That’s my take; there’s promise, but you’re going to have to do a lot of hard work to get it moving.
(A couple of disclaimers:
(1: If you write because you love writing, then for heaven’s sake don’t listen to any of us yahoos. If you want to get published, though, then talk to as many knowledgeable people as you can.
(2: I, and I guess all of us, are reading these as poetry. The rules for writing poetry are totally different from those for writing songs, and we can’t evaluate lyrics without hearing the actual song.)
I thought this was good:
from ‘Eternity’, but I didn’t find much else that I liked in the three or four I looked at(sorry); there’s a big difference though, between reading it as poetry and hearing it as well-sung lyrics against a good tune; there are plenty of songs out there which, if you tried to read the lyrics as poetry, would be truly cringe-worthy.
My advice (and I’m no expert) would be to try to be a little less straightforward in what you say; try to express yourself in a way that makes people have to work a little to extract the meaning and include bits that don’t actually have any meaning (but sound good) to extract, to keep 'em guessing.
And if you’re writing poetry as poetry, try free verse.
I was reminded immediately of Clapton and Tears In Heaven
It’s good to see that I have some people that found something they liked any way.
I guess at 16 years old I just haven’t quite grasped just how complex things are.
