Yeah, but What's the Song About?

You can now buy the digital download of Ghost Notes the Audio Book at CDBaby.

And please listen to "Incident," download it for free, and pass it on to friends and family.

I really don't care what most songs are "about."

I've always believed that pop songs are, first and foremost, about the feelings they evoke. When I hear one of my favorite songs, I get a weird chill, and something pleasurable happens in my head. Nothing said about the song should take away from that experience.

When songwriters talk about what their favorite songs mean, I'm usually disappointed. I respect artists like Dylan and Babb, who seem preternaturally opposed to revealing even a shred of what their songs are about, or what they might mean. It's probably better that way.

So I'm going to violate this rule with my new song, "Incident", which I just released for free at my ReverbNation page.

I violate it because it's a story I tell when I play the song live, and it seems to add to, rather than subtract from, the enjoyment of it.

The song is about a conversation I once had with my friend, we'll call him Bob.

At the time, Bob was two things that he really didn't believe went together.

He was 50, and he was single.

So, if it's the 21st century, and you're fifty and single, and you don't like it, what do you do?

Why, you go to match.com, of course.

So, Bob signed up with match.com. He had to select a "radius," or how far he was willing to travel to meet with that special someone. He chose 20 miles and got a list of 15-20 possible women within that radius.

He went through each of these women and, for one reason or another, none of them worked out. They were all too this or too that, and his communications with the few he contacted didn't go so well.

So, what do you do when you can't find a love connection within your radius?

Why, increase your radius, of course.

So, Bob increased his radius to 50 miles, and he got a new list.

But none of those ladies worked either.

So he started getting crazy with his radius. He went to 100 miles, then to 200, then to 500.

Pretty soon he was getting emails from women in Michigan, in New England, in Austria, in Southeast Asia.

So, "Incident" is about Bob's experience with match.com, and about increasing your radius.

Give it another listen and see if it makes more sense.

If you want it to make more sense.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Buy Ghost Notes, the novel or brand new audio book.



Buy Songs from Memory, the album


Buy Stuck Outside of Phoenix, the novel