My Last Five Pop Songs

That wonderful friend of mine, Gerda Hovius, who helped me gain access to most of my pop song recordings and classical music compositions from the Jamendo website (which won’t let me play or download them, for some reason), has pulled through for me again. She emailed me those last five songs I didn’t have as of my last post of pop songs, so now I have them all at last! Thanks again, Gerda! I owe you big time!

In fact, she sent them to me just after I’d published my blog post of most of the rest of my pop songs. I could have simply updated that post to include the five songs, but I decided to publish them separately instead, in order to stretch out and extend interest in my music a little further.

As I mentioned in my last post, four of these pop songs were originally published on my second Jamendo album, Meeting Places. These were “Meeting Place,” “Better,” “‘Til Divorce Do Us Part,” and “Lethargy.” The fifth track was originally published on my third Jamendo album, Infinite Ocean. It was “Moonlit Strolls.”

The album title, Meeting Places, was in plural because, if you were to hear all the tracks of that album in order, you’d notice common musical ideas, or ‘meeting places,’ that linked the first track to the second (an electronic synth sound), the second to the third (the gamelan-like sound I discussed in my previous song post), the third to the fourth (recorders and tuned percussion sounds), etc.

The song “Meeting Place” is in the singular because it’s about finding the one common unifying idea in the entire universe. Does such a unifying principle (Brahman, the Tao, the “Infinite Ocean“) exist, or is it just a figment of my imagination?

Musically, the song combines the electronic synth and drums dance sound of “Blow” with the gamelan imitation sound of songs like “Grateful,” “Freedom,” and “Regrets?” To expand my musical range, I added recorders and a harmonica solo at the end.

“Better” has me playing ascending melodies to symbolize a striving for self-improvement. I do this tone painting in my singing and playing of the recorder. In the lyrics, I make an allusion to the Beatles song, “Getting Better.”

Throughout the recording of Meeting Places, I had difficulty keeping the recorders in tune. I’m not 100% sure about the last recorder notes I play on “Better,” so I hope, Dear Reader and Listener, you’ll forgive me if those notes sound a bit off.

“‘Til Divorce Do Us Part” is a satirical song in 5/4 time about people who marry for superficial reasons (sexual attraction, money, social status), then get divorced soon after. The music was inspired by a Nonesuch recording of an African tribal wedding song, though I added the gamelan imitation sound, bongoes, a steel drum sound for a keyboard solo, recorder, and an acoustic guitar solo. The juxtaposition of lyrics about superficial, loveless modern marriages in the West, with music inspired by that of a traditional African wedding (presumably for marriages that are far more enduring) was meant to be ironic.

“Lethargy,” also in 5/4 and immediately following “‘Til Divorce Do Us Part” on Meeting Places (and therefore, in sharing the same time signature, have this in common as their ‘meeting place’), is a 12-bar blues/jazz song I composed at the acoustic guitar. The song is about my constant drowsiness and lack of energy, something that’s predictably gotten worse as I’ve gotten older.

I added piano and harmonica licks at the beginning and ending of the song, as well as a jazz electric guitar solo and an electric piano solo, the former of which I’m particularly proud, even if I do say so myself.

“Moonlit Strolls” is a sentimental song composed at the acoustic guitar in an old-fashioned, 1930s and 1940s jazz style, like “The Happy Song,” which it follows on Infinite Ocean. The chord progressions make extensive use of the diminished seventh chord as a passing chord.

Lyrically, the song is about walks at night that I used to take with my then-girlfriend, now my wife, about twenty years ago. I have pleasant memories of that simpler time in my life, which I tried to give a sweet kind of expression to in this song.

The one thing I don’t like about this recording is my annoying falsetto, meant to represent her voice as a stereotyped imitation of a woman talking. I hope you, Dear Reader and Listener, won’t be as irritated by it as I am.

Anyway, that’s all five of the last songs. I hope you like them and will be more forgiving of their imperfections than I am. Cheers!