“Rearrange” - a song about bavardage
Another tune written for the songwriting group I am a part of. The monthly prompt was “Rearrange”. Also did you know you could google a word to see when it was the most popular? Bavardage hit it’s peak around 1820.
Story Pairing
This song has a backstory, sure, but some stories are better left tucked neatly into a song and left to slumber.
Instead I wanted to rant a bit on an idea that has been floating around my head when it comes to songwriting. I follow a lot of writers from all over the world and I’ve noticed a way that songwriters seem to be talking about songs. Co-writes seem to be blowing up (maybe they always have and I just haven’t noticed), but I am getting a lot of Spotify recommendations for tunes that are a collaboration. Following some of these artists online, they post about songs they’ve made in a room with other writers. A version of the phrase “We got another one today” is what is sitting oddly in my head. I am having trouble relating to songwriting as a sort of conquest.
As I read through books about writing a very common theme is that you write every day and work on keeping yourself sharp. It can be argued that by showing up daily and keeping the skills sharp you are partaking in a sort of hunt. Arriving at the edge of the woods to see what beast stick their head out. You can either lure this beast out and capture it, or you can see what it has to say. One approach you are certainly leaving with something, the other depends on how good of a listener you are. I wonder how other writers take this.
What I see is a lot of writers boasting about a song like a game animal they tracked down and caught. It’s one way to use the tools that you are keeping sharp, as weapons. It certainly will get you a song, and it seems like it will probably get you one fastest. When I see the list of songwriters tagged on to big releases, it feels to me like they all got in a room, yanked a wild song kicking and screaming into the same space, and then set upon it with spears. Each stab equates to some ownership and a claim to the fame. The animal was never going to run, it had nowhere to go. It had a bag pulled over its head and was already being led by force, and then it became a trophy. Each stab takes it a little farther away from a state of recognition. When the spears stop falling and the bag is removed, all that’s left are remnants of what was or what could have been. Those get divided equally, and then placed into a machine that makes sausage. What comes out it a clean version of distilled potential that can be safely packaged up and sold to offset any costs as well as fund the next “hunt”. A product was made. A version of the mission was accomplished.
** My words aren’t a dog on getting into a room with friends and writing a song, it’s more of thinking of a song as a prize or a product. There are music cities out there with companies that hire people to sit in a room and they don’t leave until they have a song… that to me is unnatural and disrespectful to the craft… but then again you won’t find one #1 hit amongst my catalog, so it just depends on what you want to add to the world. Something living or something plastic.
On the other side of the coin, I see writers that are keeping their tools sharp, but they are shovels, trowels, rakes, and hoes. They also have a tank full of water, and a shed full of fertilizer. There are more things to manage, more pieces to appreciate, and more chances that you will fail. They are practicing the craft by maintaining fertile ground and storing the inputs needed to create. They aren’t placing any seeds, just keeping the land. I imagine a giant sheet that hangs over this space, and every morning the writer must go out and pull the sheet back, exposing the ground. Again they plant not a single seed but look up the the ether where seeds are riding the wind like birds. Those birds are looking down at all these patches of open land, looking for the square that deserves them. Eventually it settles on a perch, with the sheet pulled back, no weeds, and a pile of fertilizer, ready to welcome. It slams into that ground and starts growing rampant. The growth is explosive and chaotic and it’s all the steward can do to keep it watered and content. It’s a race at the gardeners expense where they will either succeed or fail. There is no partial success, no chance at grinding up the scraps to make all the work up to this point mean anything. They either will keep this surge satiated or will fall short of the demand and be left with a field of ash as what could have been burns itself out. At the end the greenskeeper will be spent, and may look at its new creation with love and adoration or confusion and despair. That’s when they decide if they will do it all again. Something that takes that much work isn’t decided lightly. It’s often not even a decision, it’s an obsession. It’s more natural than creating ground meat, but it also comes with it’s fair share of pitfalls and turnoffs.
There are infinite ways to think about songwriting, but these are the two that have been warring in my head lately. My thought is that there aren’t shortcuts, and we never deserve a song. It isn’t ours, we just got lucky enough to be close by when it chose to settle. Maybe it would have grown better in someone else’s field, and maybe it can be sliced and diced into something selfishly “better”, and maybe it’s not a debate that needs answered. I love authenticity in songwriting, and I don’t think that can be manufactured, it has to be respected and coerced. Fight me.
Song Structure
Chords:
Verse - G / C / G / D / G
Chorus - C / G / D / C / G
Voice Memos
Notebook Page
Sept 2024
Lyrics
You’ve been moving pieces round, that belong to you and me
Putting them in places that I never thought they'd be
Refer to any contract, ownership reads equally
It’s a shame
You’ve been rearranging pieces in my name
You’ve been painting over memories with a heavy handed brush
Covering my face in all the pictures left of us
Anything to try to get the truth that’s there to hush
To keep it lame
You’ve been rearranging memories in my name
They don’t know what to call me
Don’t know what is true
It’s been all torn up and twisted
On account of loving you
I do not have the heart to tell them what my names been through
I’ll leave that rearranging all to you
You’ve been barking out your orders to hunt and shoot me down
Alway seem to have a couple soldiers lying round
You train em not to question, to just follow like a hound
Then take aim
You’ve been rearranging orders in my name
They don’t know what to call me
Don’t know what is true
It’s been all torn up and twisted
On account of loving you
I do not have the heart to tell them what my names been through
I’ll leave that rearranging all to you
The letters I’ve been sending to cease and to desist
And begging for some common ground to salvage some of this
Get read out load in piecemeal and filtered through a hiss
Of who’s to blame
You’ve been rearranging letters in my name
They don’t know what to call me
Don’t know what is true
It’s been all torn up and twisted
On account of loving you
I do not have the heart to tell them what my names been through
I’ll leave that rearranging all to you