Artists Are (Shitty) People Too. (Song a Month: January).

Artists Are (Shitty) People Too

So here's the first song of my Song a Month project. (If you haven't already read my introduction to this project, you can do so in my last post, here.) It's called "Artists Are (Shitty) People Too", and was inspired by a conversation with a friend about heartbreak, overseas travel and the inherent emotional selfishness of the artistic.

For anyone interested, I've included some discussion about the song, and the lyrics after the jump.

So as I've already mentioned, the lyrics to this song were inspired by a conversation I had with a friend. Specifically we were talking about a book she's writing. I won't go into details because it's sounds really interesting but it's her story so I'll leave it for her to tell. But some of the themes that came up were heartbreak, travel and how artists, even though art is often very emotive, can be really shit at interacting with other people and dealing with their emotions.

This got me thinking about my own travels overseas, which certainly came about at a time of heartbreak for me too but in my case I never really did anything creative with the experiences I had. I had some of the best times of my life (adventures in New York, seeing/meeting/drinking with Murder by Death at a bar in LA) and came away feeling much better about everything. I wrote letters to friends, and kept a blog, but I never wrote any songs out of it. I've had ideas floating around in my head ever since, but they fall well into the "unfinished ideas" category I talked about in my last post. Instead I figured out how to play "Syke! Life is Awesome!" by Bomb the Music Industry! (off the album "To Leave or Die in Long Island"), changing a few lines here and there so that it fit with my specific experiences. This is something I can do with a lot of BTMI! songs. Sometimes it seems there's a lot of parallels between my and Jeff Rosenstock's lives. Obviously not exactly the same, especially since he lives in the States not in Melbourne. But a lot of his work resonates with me on a personal level, and as his work has matured and gone through different life phases, each new album seems to have similarities with the things that have changed in my life too.

I included the line "you just take their words and pretend they apply to you" in reference to this. It's actually a quote from the conversation I was having with my friend, but taken out of context here. (I'd made a joke saying something she'd just described was a typical Tuesday night for me. When I admitted I was just lying for dramatic/comedic effect she responded "no you didn't, you took my stuff and pretended it applied to you.") In the case of the song though, for me it's about not using covers to describe my own experiences anymore and instead creating my own work. Which is what this whole project is about. As the song was taking shape I thought it would be fun to include some lines from the actual conversation since it was starting to become as much about the writing of the actual song as it was about anything else. This was kind of an homage to Tim Kasher as well (of Cursive/The Good Life/Commander Venus), another of my favourite artists. Kasher's lyric style is very clever on an introspective (you could say "meta") level, often including lines about writing the song itself and/or conversation between two people to give different viewpoints. (See "Sink to the Beat", "Art is Hard", "Butcher the Song", "Entertainer", etc.) And of course I already mentioned Amanda Palmer in my last post.

I was thinking about going through each lyric of the song line-by-line and explaining it, but I think that will get a bit tedious, and now that you've got a general idea of the ideas that were in my head hopefully most of it makes sense on it's own now. So I'll just say a couple more things.

The line about drinking with a gypsy princess in New York City is true. At least I choose to believe it's true. That was what she told me anyway. The facts are I met a girl at a bar and we talked for a while. She had some interesting things to say, she seemed to know what she was talking about, and I had no reason not to believe her. It was only when I told the story to some other people back home and they laughed at me that I even thought to question it. There's something magical about NY that made me believe it, and even if it's not true, I quote from Patrick Emery's introduction to The Tote calendar: "given the perennial choice between fact and myth, embrace the mythology every time."

The end of the song is a return to the conversation that had inspired it, and also a reference to songs I wrote as a teenager. It's an encouragement to my friend for taking an experience that was painful and making something interesting and positive out of it. On the other hand, the only songs I ever wrote when I was heartbroken were angry and bitter. While that might have felt good at the time, they didn't provide anything positive to the world. If anything they just hurt the people they were about and bore everyone else. I'm a bit embarrassed by all my teenage angst poetry these days (emo wasn't really a thing back then, but that's surely what you'd call it nows) and have no desire to write things like that any more. Another reason for wanting to do this project is to be able to move away from that. To take pointers from writers such as Gareth Liddiard (The Drones), Adam Turla (Murder by Death) and Nick Cave and write songs about fictional tales, or at least grand stories that are not just whingeing about my life. No #FML for me! The irony of course being that in trying to do so I wrote the most introspective, self-indulgent song of my life!

Musically this song came out nothing as I intended! I originally wanted something upbeat and poppy. Again as a tip of the hat to Tim Kasher I was thinking something like his song Cold Love (or see this video where he introduces the song describing the feel he was going for, which is quite close to what I was thinking too). That riff never came to me though. So I ended up re-working two riffs I've had lying around for a while, playing them twice as fast and with a lot more energy. This in turn inspired the middle section of the lyrics. The use of "two chord progressions" is a deliberate double meaning. One referring to the fact that I had the two progressions lying around for years thinking they needed a bridge to be made into a song. The other referring to the idea of punk songs only needing three chords.

Ok, that turned out longer than even I thought it would! I'll try not to write so much about every song I do, I just think there's more to this song than a lot of people may realise and wanted to include some of that detail. So hopefully you enjoy it. And if you'd like the lyrics while you listen along, here they are:


Artists Are (Shitty) People Too.

Let's just start this story in the middle,
'cause everything I write these days feels like it should come 'after',
So let's just pretend that's what lead us here.

"The heartbroken write about being heartbroke,
but you just take their words and pretend they apply to you."
(Well I guess that's true.)

When I said "artists are not so good at other people,"
I wonder if you noticed I'm included too (well I assume you knew).
I like songs that let me feel something, 'cause I won't allow myself.
That's the reason I've been writing this damn song for so many years.

Half finished lines,
and collections of melodies.
Two-chord progressions waiting on a third.

Hiding messages I still can't seem to bring myself to say.
And trynna pass them off as something much more deep.

I spent years just trying to find a way to write a song about the night
I spent drinking with a gypsy princess, somewhere in New York City.
And sure she may have been lying,
but when faced with a choice between the fact and a myth;
embrace the myth every time.

Still, creative people will always inspire you to create.
And at least you're making something with your pain.
All I've ever done with mine is hurt some more and bore the rest.
But artists are shitty people too.