Portfolio Project Music Production - Lyrics

The music production aspect of my project has become more difficult than I imagined. I do have experience when it comes to songwriting, but this would be the first time I actually produce the instrumentals to it. I tend to draw inspiration from other artists and their work, and this is what I am planning on doing. I have recently began to draw the theme around the lyrics from this song:

I feel nervous in a way that can't be named

I dream last night of a sign that read "the end of love"

And I remember thinking even in my dreaming

It was a good line for a song

And in a moment of joy and fury I threw myself

In the balcony like my grandmother so many years before me

I've always been in love with you

Could you tell it from the moment that I met you?

This is the mood that I am trying to create. Therefore, I have decided on the name of my film- "The End of Love". The title is the feeling that I am working to create in this film- one that makes the audience believe that love is dead. To create this feeling, I have come up with the following lyrics:

Love has been a street that I cannot follow

I turn and turn at every intersection

And I feel as if maybe for some reason

I'm just not meant to be able to follow

To aid me in the songwriting process, I have been exploring several music writing podcasts, such as that of Song Exploder. Here, I have learned two crucial components of my songwriting process. The first was an interview on Janelle Monae's songwriting process for her song "So Afraid". Monae speaks on how you have to make yourself vulnerable to write a song. So I came up with this. I decided to vent about one of the most painful experiences of my life. I woke up over night and wrote this at around 4 in the morning in my bed after a painful dream.

"From the moment that I met you, I knew you were the one. Maybe not the person I was meant to be with for the rest of my life, but I knew that you came into my life to teach me something. What that is, I was not sure. I’m still not sure what I was supposed to learn. I felt like you were made for me. You told me “why are we perfect for each other?”, I thought: “you’re perfect for me”. And as someone who was a perfectionist, I was unable to find one flaw in you. You felt like destiny. I truly felt love. Not immediately, of course. But far after we separated. I let the concept of you marinate and develop over time, and I began to form a nostalgia for those moments we spent together. I will never forget the way you held me in the car that night, or the words you spoke to me that were so powerful that made me cry. I miss you everyday of my life, and I will never stop yearning for the chance to meet you again. Maybe we’ll meet again another time, when we’re both ready. But until now I wish you the best."

And so, as Monae told me to, I began to write from the heart.

I was always told to close my heart and to open it slow

But meeting you made me want to open up a little more

Again, I'm writing this as I am thinking. Another podcast I listened to from the same show was one by Solange. She remembers writing her hit single "Cranes in the Sky" in Miami, when she literally saw cranes on buildings in the sky. She thought of Miami as this place of peace and tranquility for her. But when she went to write, she was it full of cranes. This represented how she continued to build up (grow), while ignoring the actual problems at hand that she is experiencing. This is what I did in the previous lyrics. I took a concept that is dear and true to my heart and expressed it through a metaphor. This metaphor I felt would properly express how it is I feel about my pain and my struggles.

I don't know where this song and film will end up, but I feel like this will be more than just a graded project for a class. I was talking with my therapist, and I told her I had trouble expressing my feelings in words. In literal sentences with literal meanings. So I decided I should turn this film opening into a way to express myself. Use these lyrics and these sounds and visual techniques to express my pain. Now, I will begin to draw an outline of what I want the opening to be, since I have established the mood I want to establish.