Author Archives: BJD

A story about a woman who slides into unfulfilling and unsuccessful relationships by tumbling ‘head over heels’. I tried to get a bit of a latin feel to the song to mirror the trip to Spain described therein. One day I might redo the vocals, which I never got quite right.

This song is about hope and despair. I have tried to record a version with more power and grandeur. So, as much a learning exercise in performance and recording as it was in songwriting.

It really does happen – I woke up with this song in my head. I got my iPad out and developed the lyric sitting in bed. The theme is the collision of grief and love. In this case a woman’s grief providing a window of access for an admirer.

I was reading ‘ Climate Change and the Course of Human History’ by John L Brooke and realised that geological time makes you look at things with a different perspective. This song is about people reacting differently to the same stimulus because their world view is shaped by the here and now.

I watched a TV documentary about America’s conspiracy theorists and right wing fanatics . Algorythms on the Web work to reinforce prejudice and misinformation by constantly redirecting people to more of the same. A propagandists dream…..

I have conflated two ideas: the demise of the high street in the face of competition from the online retailers and the efforts of organised religion to preserve its place in the modern world. This observation is set against a Celtic backing track, alluding to myths and legends.

I read a BBC news article about a young disabled man. “Robert and Trude mourned what they thought had been a lonely and isolated life for their disabled son. But when Mats died, they discovered that people all over Europe lit candles in his memory.”

How do we cope with not fully meeting our aspirations in life? Being able to box up disappointment and regret is one solution but sometimes others might glimpse what is in that box.

Song a Week 22 Week 13: Learning my blues scales I played around and then wrote this quirky lyric about being swept away with a drunk ferryboat captain. Saved from a long journey to a fabled land overseas by a mermaid, I am returned to the beach. This version with new vocal and slightly shortened in 2022.

I asked Joe, a friend who is also a semi-pro musician, how you could make money out of songwriting. He said, “Write a Christmas hit.” It was August but I had a crack at it. It is about the office party.