happy tunesday! music no one else can hear

 Here's another one of my songs, recorded by Tobias Wilson.

This is a song that took me 35 years or so to write. It went through many iterations and versions, including one that got recorded and released on a CD. I'm not sure if I ever wrote up the story behind this song -- I didn't find anything in a quick search, so I'm gonna go ahead and share. If I'm repeating myself, please forgive me.

If you want the TLDR version, it's essentially: A friend in high school made a stray comment. I used it as a title for a song, which underwent numerous rewrites until what I have now.

The extended version:

It started with a stray comment a friend made when I was in high school. My friend, Melinda, was listening to music on my Walkman. At some point she said she should give it back to me and stop "dancing to music no one else can hear." The phrase struck me as a great song title. At the time, I was doing a lot of songwriting. Sadly, most (that is, all) of the songs I was writing at the time sucked. Back then (as now), song ideas often started with a turn of phrase that caught my attention. So I kind of tucked that into my mind as a title to use.

If I recall correctly, I did use the phrase as a song title at the time. The song sucked and has been mercifully forgotten in the mists of time.

The current song started taking form when I was in grad school. At the end of my first year, I went home for the summer. The woman I was dating stayed in Ann Arbor. And I wrote a song about missing her while we were apart. I don't remember the whole thing, but I do remember the first verse:

I'm lying in bed
With you in my head,
Wondering where you are now.
Can it be?
Are you thinking of me
Even though I'm not around?

I also remember the chorus:

Your song is with me wherever I am
Even though you're not here.
And all around me there's music.
Music no one else can hear.

For the record, I originally wrote the verses o the tune of Air Supply's "All Out of Love," which begins:

I'm lying alone
With my head on the phone,
Thinking of you 'til it hurts.
I know you hurt too
But what else can we do?
Tormented and torn apart.

That's something I still do sometimes -- I write lyrics with the melody of an existing song in mind. Then I go and change the melody.

Anne, the woman I was dating, liked the song. Or at least she liked the gesture.

But I wasn't really satisfied with it. I liked the first verse and the chorus, but not the rest.

A few years later I got together on a weekend with a work friend, and together we reworked the song. We combined the verse and chorus into a new chorus, with a melody I wrote. I added a bridge. My friend and I wrote some verses, and - voila! - a new song was born. I was actually pretty proud of that. Even more so when a friend and his brothers recorded it for their first (and, to date, only) commercial CD. That got me into ASCAP, which is cool. I blogged something about that album here.

But at some point since then I became disenchanted with the song (Scott, if you're reading this, please forgive me). I won't go into my reasons. If you like it, I'd hate to convince you to not like it.

Anyway, over a period of years I rewrote it. Again. This time I stripped out the verses and turned the chorus into the first verse and chorus. I then wrote a couple new verses and modified the bridge. In so doing, I removed everything that my old coworker had done. But I turned it into a (mostly) different song, which I like. And I think Toby did a great job with it. And if I ever get around to putting out an album, this will likely be the title track.

I hope I remembered all the details. If not, ask for your money back.

Anyway, enjoy.