When you put lyrics to music, and you wonder what notes to choose, often the solution can be found in the lyrics themselves. Sometimes you struggle to find the right chords and the convincing melody for your text. Often it seems that illustrating the words with the music is the answer to your problems. But often enough it isn’t. Sometimes it feels like your painting red roses red, and we don’t want to do that do we?
But at christmas time all considerations of overdoing it or stating the obvious go out the door. At christmas time it’s ‘no holds bar’. Costumes can be tacky, trees can be too much of a good thing and songs can be hopelessly sentimental. Somehow, at christmas time, it is decided that we go back to very simple rules: Good is good, and more good is better. Put a glittering, flashing sled with reindeers made of lightbulbs on your rooftop; everybody loves it! Have a plastic, singing christmas tree in your window sill; works wonders. Bring out the brandy butter and the christmas pudding, and the brandy and the chocolates filled with brandy as well: all good! More is more! And more is better!
l love the christmas season. l love it most of all because all the blasé, high society cultivated opinions go out the door. All that: ‘Well the protagonist wasn’t able to carry the tension arc all the way to the apotheosis, l felt.’ Away with that superior crap. No it’s just: ‘There was a walking tree, and a polar bear stealing people’s scarves, there was jingle bells, and l cried and l didn’t know why. lt was a lovely pantomime.’ All that cultural aloofness just vanishes at Christmas. We become children, who love lights, and candy, and who just want to sit by the fire and hear people laugh.’
l’ve always felt that when the text stays close to home, the music should also stay close to home. Not only in style: the style of the Old Community Songbook so to speak. But also technically. And in my next VLOG l explain this:
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