A wave of inspiration came over me and it led me to blogger. Perhaps not writing for sometime might have led to a sudden burst of inspiration. It could also be due to my head almost on the verge of explosion due to an accumulation of ideas over the past few weeks. One thing is certain. Prince is back.

Deciphering Songs

A friend of mine told me that it is best the listener deciphers the song on his own rather than reading books and visiting websites to listen to people's interpretation of the song. The people's interpretation might/will greatly differ from the writer's intepretation at the time the song was conceived. It is best left to the imagination of the listener to decipher the song.

Thus, I have tried to decipher all the songs I listen to. Numerous artists have troubled me with their uncomprehendable lyrics and Mr Dylan ranks at the top of these artists. The only song which I claim I could fully understand is his earlier record, "Blowing in the Wind". The problem creeps in when I listen to his other songs. The first 4 verses of "I want you" is so unrelated in my opinion and yet in tune with the music and makes me wonder why will a undertaker, organ grinder and saxophonist have anything to do with the song.

The same confusing theme runs in almost all of his poetic songs where there seems to be some connection between all the verses and a novice listener like myself have trouble deciphering. He was either playing with peoples' mind by adding in random phrases and gaining satisfaction in confusing people. Or he feels a real strong sense of connection and conviction when he writes the song. Till then, I will continue to submit to Dylan's uncomprehendable, poetic torture.

Paul Simon

The curiousity of Dylan led me to a google search of the best song writers of all time and in all of the links I visited, Dylan came out tops but the person to occupy second spot on certain websites shocked me. Paul Simon the half of Simon and Garfunkel duo is supposedly the second best songwriter beating John Lenon and Paul McCartney. I chanced upon the Paul Simon Companion book containing selected interviews of the artist.

The book brought a fresh perspective to how I view music. I began to listen to the rhythm, melody, the different instruments, the lyrics and how these various elements interact to produce a song. All these parts have to be tuned and tweaked to produce a song and arranging a song could take hours and Simon put in a lot of energy into ensuring that no detail is left hanging.

Song writing is indeed tough and I tried my hand at writing but I constantly suffer the common writer's block. Simon discusses about writers block in the book and how he used to suffer from it and what he did to overcome it. He goes on to explain that he employs many different approaches to song writing and does not stick to one. After reading the book, my respect for musicians had risen and made me realise that music is indeed a mixture of science and art.