Photo: Andrew Dailinger
I was on a road trip with my family, and we were listening to the new album. I wanted feedback on what the single should be because I had no idea. I was surprised when my wife picked “Everybody Wants a Piece of You.” For one thing, it’s a ballad. I’d been told that you don’t lead with a ballad because it doesn’t generate excitement. I’m starting to question that notion, though.
After a few weeks of seeing what people organically flock to, it seems that my wife may have had it right in the first place. It is the second most listened-to song on the album, and there is no algorithmic explanation for that. It has been added to a dozen playlists already. It is not a song that people familiar with my music have heard much. I’ve never played it out live. The song shows up thirty minutes into the album, so people had to hear a number of songs before they came upon this one. So why the popularity?
Ballads don’t generate excitement by their very nature. A ballad should haunt. When you hear a good ballad, it should echo in your heart after the music stops playing. Leonard Cohen has the best examples of these types of ballads. “Bird on a Wire” is very simply (but poetically) constructed. Like an aha moment, the song dawns on you. It doesn’t bang you over the head. The sun slowly rises, and the result is a desire to experience that sunrise again.
Of course, I love the song. I wrote it. But why I love it is unlikely to explain anyone else’s love. This was one of the last songs that I wrote on the album. I was emotionally and physically exhausted. My emotional exhaustion was the result of a painful breakup, followed by a summer of inanity, followed by a rebound, which somehow managed to reach the same level of emotional strain that the initial break-up had heaped upon me. The physical exhaustion was the result of having moved all my possessions into a new apartment in Washington Heights. It was yet another apartment three floors up with no elevator. But it provided me with some much-needed space. This space allowed me the opportunity to reflect.
It never ceases to amaze me how I could write a song with wisdom when I felt like I was flailing my way through life. I suppose that’s the argument for meditation. We all can tap into wisdom when we quiet our minds. This song was my meditation. The narrator of the song seems to see things clearly in a way that I normally couldn’t. And yet… the second verse really suggests the the narrator is every bit as captive to the charms of the goddess. The song is as much about him as it is about her.
The song was the last gasp of the relationship that had died fifteen months earlier. I had already let go of her as a person. I had even let go of the loss. And yet, here she was again, finding her way into my music. But she was no longer a real person. She had become a symbol, which is why she is described as “just a goddess”. She may as well have been a ghost. I suppose every ballad needs a ghost if it’s going to haunt.
The Recording
For a long time, this song was just guitars and mandolins. I had moved back to Louisville, and I was working on Morgan Brooks’ first album, Always Be Here for You. I had arranged strings for the song “Beautiful Lie.” I enjoyed it a lot and wanted to arrange some more strings, so I looked at my own music and began writing a lot of arrangements- including for this song.
It’s easy to write arrangements, but it’s another thing to find the musicians to do it. For one thing, it can be expensive. I spoke with a colleague at Waggener for help. Tom Grisanti is a great guy and a great musician, but I could be biased because he is also a fellow teacher. He took two afternoons off to come to my studio and play all the string parts for the song. He also taught me that a string quartet usually doesn’t include bass. Instead, there are typically two violins, a viola and a cello. Ah, you live, and you learn.
I am thrilled with his contribution, and I doubt he will even get a chance to see this post as he is a newly minted father. Babies sure keep you busy.