I write music all the time. I always have a song that I am working on, usually a few. They bounce around from piano to guitar for a week or so, sometimes getting caught by Logic Pro, before scuttling off to die with all the others. I always intend to go back to them and “finish” them, but I am a terrible finisher it seems. In the last 7 years I have “finished” 10 songs, despite having started ten times that.
There are a lot of things that hold me back from sharing songs more often than I do. I am scared of what people with think of the things I share. I’m scared that they aren’t worth sharing.
The curios thing is that despite feeling like this I still feel compelled to share something. I don’t understand what this is exactly. It seems somehow not enough to just write music for myself. Maybe I’m looking for validation. Maybe the fact that I find it scary is also what compels me. However, if a fear of failure prevents me from sharing then haven’t I already failed?
It also struck me recently that no one is listening. Who are these people who I am worried about judging me? They exist only in my head.
I think about my songs a lot more than anyone else. I think about every aspect of it and how it can be improved. And yet for all this I am not convinced the end result is any better than the song was when it was born.
In this spirit I am sharing this song, which is very unfinished. Here are the things I don’t like about it:
- The lyrics all start with the same phrase – it’s lazy and repetitive
- The lyrics are too cliché and uninteresting
- The lyrics don’t always fit the melody (the last line is particularly bad)
- The music is too repetitive – there is only one structure through the whole song
- The melody isn’t interesting enough to justify six verses
- The piano plays the same thing as the vocals. It’s redundant.
- It’s a rip off of Videotape and Like Spinning Plates
- The recording is too low quality
- There a several mistakes in the recording
- It’s too hard to hear the lyrics
However, I won’t have time or inclination to fix these things before I move on to another song, so here it is. No one is listening anyway.
