#7 The Difference Between (“Better” track by track)

I did “behind the song” blog series for both of my last two albums, and some people seem to like them, so I thought I would do it again! “The Difference Between” is the final track from my latest release, Better. For convenience, the lyrics and YouTube & Spotify streams are at the bottom of this post.

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This is my only cheat song on Better that I actually wrote years ago, around 2017. All the rest of the songs I wrote this past February. Even though I always liked it ever since I wrote it, for some reason I didn’t think it was worth releasing at first because it felt too short and simple. And okay, I know most of my songs are simple, but most of them aren’t this short!

I don’t want to go into too much detail about the inspiration for privacy reasons. But generally speaking, it’s about people who get into music for the wrong reasons. I’m not talking about people who just like to party and are hoping to get rich and famous – I mean, good luck with that, but if that’s the dream that makes you happy and you’re not hurting anyone with it, more power to you.

It’s more about people who think that music gives them status (rich and famous or not), and that’s the only reason they do it. While I like to think they are not the majority, unfortunately there are a lot of people like this. Unfortunately, music does tend to confer status more often than not, and so people with these kinds of tendencies are attracted to it as a career/hobby. I’ve occasionally been mistreated by people like that, and seen others mistreated, because once they got a bit of power they couldn’t bear to make room for anyone new, lest it take away from how special they were. Basically, just like in any other facet of life, these are insecure people who feel like they have to build themselves up by tearing other people down (or at least holding other people down).

The worst part is I’m sure I’ve got a long road ahead of me dealing with people like that for the rest of my life! But don’t worry, a few bad apples is not nearly enough of a reason for me to give up on the only thing in life that’s ever meant something to me. I’m here to stay regardless of these experiences.

I actually wrote the lyrics to this song pretty fast, and I’m proud of them. They seemed to be more vivid than most of my other lyrics, especially back then – I like to think I’ve gotten better with hard work and practice. I think it was just because I was so fired up when I wrote it that it just poured out of me! I even found it easier than usual to come up with (near) rhymes. I actually like every part of it – amazingly, for once I have no complaints on the lyrics – but some of my favorite parts are the “getting the gold” and “foot in the door” verses. I read those lines and I’m just like, damn, I can be good with words sometimes (just not nearly often enough, haha).

And then of course I like the ending – I thought “scrounging together pennies to pay my bills” was an apt contrast for being the leader of the pecking order. And honestly, it’s accurate for me. Not that I’m not ambitious and wouldn’t love to be recognized on my merits and be financially comfortable someday… but if I only ever make enough to live on, I’ll still feel very fortunate to be able to do that. And I have met a lot of people for whom that is not remotely the case!

Musically, I wanted it to be a simple acoustic punk song, a genre I’ve always preferred even though most of my songs don’t fit neatly into it. I like to think this one does. And while I definitely think I’ve written better songs since then, and I know the melody is very simple, I still really like this song.

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LYRICS
The difference between you and me
Is with me you get what you see
And I’m capable of love and it’s free

And you’re too focused on the fact that
The only way to get the gold is if it’s yours and yours alone
And everybody else goes home empty-handed
I would be surrounded by a few who
Encourage everything I do but always try to speak the truth
Before I’d have an army to be my yes men

And you’re not interesting, you’re interested
In looking cool and talking shit
Where everything’s about the drink
And I just want to leave ‘cause it’s not my style
And well, sometimes I wonder if it’s even worth
The struggle and the pain and hurt
To get my foot inside the door
When I’m out in the cold and you’re waving from the inside

The difference between you and me is in the dream
I want to scrounge together pennies from this work to pay my bills someday
And what I want I will achieve
You want to be the leader of the pecking order till you’re old and gray
And you will never be happy.

#6 We Can’t Let Them Win (“Better” track by track)

I did “behind the song” blog series for both of my last two albums, and some people seem to like them, so I thought I would do it again! “We Can’t Let Them Win” is the sixth track from my latest release, Better. For convenience, the lyrics and YouTube & Spotify streams are at the bottom of this post.

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What’s disappointing about this song (but it happens) is that it started out as a line I was really excited about, but the finished product ended up possibly being my least favorite on this release. I suppose I don’t despise it — I can play it with confidence, but it’s the last one I would think of adding to my set list out of all of them.

I suppose it’s mostly the last part of the song that I don’t like, so sometimes I just don’t play it and I like the song better that way, but even the verses and the chorus just feel somehow uninspired compared with some of my other songs.

The line I started with was the title, “we can’t let them win,” and I had the melody for it too. I had grandiose ideas for what the song could about, so that might be where I went wrong. That never works out too well.

It was also the fact that this was a song I consciously chose to finish, and writing it was a bit of a slog. The songs that I make myself finish, I’m not sure if other people can tell, but I feel like I can always hear the lack of inspiration in the final product. I definitely have to keep doing that if I want to be a professional songwriter (as they say, action often precedes inspiration). But I’m hoping that over time, I can understand more of what I’m doing differently when I’m “inspired” versus uninspired, and that will lead me to some tricks that can make the uninspired sound “inspired.”

In terms of writing, the first thing I did was come up with an outline, which I didn’t find too hard. Verse 1 would simply be about stubbornly negative people – we need to keep ourselves positive and not let them win in that sense. Then, verse 2 would intensify that by making it about something more serious and more to the point – not letting those people win who want to make the world a worse place and take away hard-won rights. I sat and played around with chords and melodies until I came up with something I liked, and actually, I will say I’m still pretty satisfied with what I came up with there.

I think most of my criticism of this song involves the lyrics. There are just a lot of lines I found a bit cheesy. If I’d had more time, I probably would have changed a lot of them. But because of deadlines I set for myself, I had less than a week from the time I finished writing to the time I recorded in studio. Not much time for finalizing and rehearsing the songs, let alone making major edits.

Phrases like “rainy day” or the lines I added to the chorus (“Give a smile while you can and reach out a helping hand”) just felt like clichés, too easy and obvious, and I know I could have come up with something more interesting if I’d taken the time. The last line of the second verse (“If they had their way we’d all be lonely”) doesn’t even make that much sense if you really think about it… what does having rights have to do with loneliness? But that was a situation  where I couldn’t come up with a line I was satisfied with, so after jotting down a handful of random ideas, I just wrote down the one I disliked the least. Also, technically, “lonely” doesn’t even near-rhyme with “need” because the emphasis is on the wrong syllable, but I’ve never been a stickler for rhymes. I notice their imperfections but accept them, just like I accept the imperfections in my life and myself.

Anyway, for me the bridge is even worse than cheesy lyrics because I just didn’t like how it turned out at all. Basically, I had no intention for the song to include a rant about corporations, and I felt like it weakened the song. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing to say, I just felt like it wasn’t compelling enough and didn’t belong, which is why I usually don’t play that part.

Oh well. At the end of the day, I came up with something I found satisfactory, even if not great. I know that I’m going to come up with lots more ideas that excite me and finish lots more songs before I’m through, so I won’t grieve for any particular idea that disappoints me in its final form.

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LYRICS
There are people in this world
Who make every day a rainy day
They never smile at anyone
They only open their mouths to complain
They’ll take the joy that we allow them to take

We can’t let them win
Give a smile while you can
And reach out a helping hand
We can’t let them win

There are people in this world
Who want to take away the rights we’ve achieved
And they can’t accept us having more
Because they’ve already got all they need
If they had their way we’d all be lonely

But to tell the truth
It’s not right versus wrong or weak versus strong
Or progressives against conservatives
It’s big corporations controlling our minds
Controlling our data and controlling our lives
Divide and conquer against everybody else
So I say
We can’t let them win