by Pat Pattison
They fill her room with chatter
And they form a line of smiles
What terrific lines. Four generations are present in her room; no doubt she has little connection with the younger generations, nor do they have much with her:
Children of her children
Bringing babies of their own
She tries to pay attention, but her mind wanders off:
Sometimes she remembers
Then her mama calls her home
Chorus 2
And inside her mind
She is running in the summer wind
When the chorus repeats, we see her as a child with her own mother, a color carefully arranged by the second verse's focus on family. The emphasis is no longer on her running, but on the family (her mama) that she runs to, surrounded as she is by strangers. The second chorus lights up brilliantly, a new and different color made possible by strong verse development.
The bridge (an overlay of old-fashioned children's songs) is the coup de grâce. It shows us the colors of childhood inside her mind, or, more accurately, inside our own minds when we were children:
It's raining it's pouring
It's raining
The old man is snoring
Come out and play with me
Bumped his head on the edge of the bed
And bring your dollies three
And he couldn't get up in the morning
Climb up my apple tree
Rain rain go away
Slide down my rain barrel
Come again another day
Into my cellar door
Little Johnny wants to play
And we'll be jolly friends
Some more
Forever more
In our third and final look at the chorus, we see her with new eyes:
And inside her mind
She is running in the summer wind
Inside her mind
She is running in the summer wind
Like a child again
We see where she really is, back again with her mama, able to run home. Reality is doubled and reflected, colored by our knowledge that she is destined to follow her own mother all too soon, as inevitably as the generations crowding into her room will follow her. That is part of the point of showing us the children in the second verse, then showing her as a child running to her mama.
Many families visit relatives in nursing homes, and most leave saddened, often thinking, “She's losing it. She didn't even remember us.” But to see their loved one in this new light for the first time running in the summer wind / Like a child again is an emotional revelation. It is this startling insight into the mind of the old woman that lights up radio station switchboards wherever “Child Again” is aired.
POWER POSITIONS
The opening and closing lines of any lyric section are naturally strong. They are bathed in spotlights. If you want people to notice an important idea, put it in the lights of a power position, and you will communicate the idea more forcefully. (For a full treatment of power positions, read my book Songwriting: Essential Guide to Lyric Form and Structure.) Look at the opening line of “Child Again”: She's wheeled into the hallway.
Closing lines are also power positions, another place to light up an important idea. In “Child Again,” the closing line prepares us to enter the chorus. I call it a trigger position, because it releases us into the chorus, carrying whatever the line says with us, and therefore we see the chorus in the light of the idea, They return her to her room.
Look at the first line and the last line of “Child Again” in combination, and you'll see how they focus the meaning of the chorus:
She's wheeled into the hallway
They return her to her room
And inside her mind
She is running in the summer wind …
Like a child again
Look at verse one carefully, and you'll see that it really contains two parts. The rhythm is basic common meter (like Mary had a little lamb), alternating first and third long phrases with shorter phrases in the second and fourth positions:
rhyme
stresses
She's whéeled ínto the hállway
x
3+
While the sún moves dówn the flóor
a
3
Líttle squáres of dáylight
x
3+
Like a húndred tímes befóre
a
3
After these four lines, things are balanced. The structure has resolved. This creates a new beginning at line five — another power position. Look how it's used:
She's taken to the garden
For the later afternoon
Just before her dinner
They return her to her room
Taken is the first stressed syllable. Of the eight lines in the verse, two are opening positions, and two are closing positions. Look at the entire verse and see what messages the power positions communicate:
She's wheeled into the hallway
While the sun moves down the floor
Little squares of daylight
Like a hundred times before
She's taken to the garden
For the later afternoon
Just before her dinner
They return her to her room
Chapman makes sure we enter the first chorus from the angle of physical helplessness. She uses her power positions — the first and last positions of the verse, plus the ending and beginning of its subsections — to lock our focus in, forcing us to see the first chorus the color she wants us to. Neat.
Not So Powerful Power Positions
Look what happens with different ideas in the power positions:
While the sun moves down the hallway
She's wheeled out from her room
So many times she's been there
As the squares of daylight move
Then later in the garden
She's taken out of doors
They return her for her dinner
Down the hallway's polished floors
Chorus
And inside her mind
She is running in the summer wind…
Like a child again
Even though the beauty of the original verse has suffered, the ideas haven't really changed, only their placement has changed. Look at the information that's in the power positions now:
While the sun moves down the hallway
As the squares of daylight move
Then later in the garden
Down the hallway's polished floors
Chorus
And inside her mind
She is running in the summer wind…
Because the power positions focus us elsewhere, the chorus seems to stress her escape from routine rather than her physical disability.
Power Positions in Verse Two
The second verse introduces a different color with its opening and closing phrases:
The family comes on Sunday
Then her mama calls her home
This verse shifts focus to her room, where she is surrounded on Sunday by family visitors. They are external to her, shown by the brilliant metaphor closing the first subsection:
And they form a line of smiles
The family visits, mostly with each other. They are probably sad that she's “so out of touch,” even though some of them are virtual strangers, four generations away.
The family seems almost oblivious as she seems to slip in and out of their reality. They don't have a clue of where she really is. The trigger line sets up the contrast between the external and the internal:
The family comes on Sunday
And they hover for a while
They fill her room with chatter
And they form a line of smiles
Children of her children
Bringing babies of their own
Sometimes she remembers
Then her mama calls her home
> Chorus
And inside her mind
She is running in the summer wind …
Like a child again
The power positions in this verse force the new color onto the chorus. Outside, the generations chatter on; inside lies a place of peace, memory, and happiness.
Each verse works beautifully to set up its special view of the chorus. The accumulation of the two systems delivers the knockout:
Verse 1
She's wheeled into the hallway
Like a hundred times before
She's taken to the garden
They return her to her room
Chorus
And inside her mind
She is running in the summer wind …
Like a child again
Verse 2
The family comes on Sunday
And they form a line of smiles
Children of her children
Then her mama calls her home
Chorus
And inside her mind
She is running in the summer wind …
Like a child again
Because her body is helpless, and because she is frustrated by the world her relatives seem so comfortable in, she seeks comfort in a kinder, gentler place away from boredom, routine, and frustration.
After the bridge shows us the colors of childhood again with her, old age becomes accessible; finally, we understand. That's the power of a perfectly developed song: It changes our way of looking at our lives and our surroundings.
More Power Positions
Opening and closing phrases are not the only way to create power positions. Wherever you create a special effect with your structure, you call attention to what you are saying. This extra focus gives the position its power. This one creates several power positions:
Mary had a little lamb
Its fleece was white as snow
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb would go, indeed
He goes wherever Mary leads
He follows with devoted speed
The opening phrase, as usual, is a power position. So is the fourth phrase, since we expect it to close the section. But it gains extra punch by rhyming early, at the second rather than the third stress. Phrase five is unexpected, adding special interest. The final phrase is the most powerful of the bunch.
Look at all the power generated in this pretty structure in “Slow Healing Heart” by Jim Rushing:
When I left I left walking wounded
x
I made my escape from the rain
a
Still a prisoner of hurt
b
I had months worth of work
b
Freeing my mind of the pain
a
I had hours of sitting alone in the dark
c
Listening to sad songs and coming apart
c
Lord knows I made crying an art
c
Woe is a slow healing heart
c
When the third phrase ends short, the acceleration gets our attention. Then the fourth phrase chimes in, and the fifth phrase closes with a rhyme. Six is another opening and calls extra attention to its length. I could argue that seven is a power position as well, but I won't. Five out of nine is plenty of action, a tribute to interesting structures. We'll see more of this in later chapters.
Moral: First be aware of where your power positions are: opening positions, closing positions, and surprises, like shorter, longer, or extra lines. Pay attention as you create them, then put something important there. Everything will come up rosy, seafoam green, Tangiers blue, sun yellow …
CHAPTER EIGHT
TRAVELOGUES
VERSE CONTINUITY
We've all seen travelogues. Ah, fabulous Hawaii — majestic mountains, pipeline surfing, luxury hotels, exotic cuisine. The places may be interesting, but as a film, a travelogue is dull, dull, dull. Its elements have no natural continuity. What do majestic mountains have to do with twenty-foot waves featuring pipeline surfing? What have either of these to do with elegant hotels and Oriental cuisine? Their only links are accidents of geography: They are all part of fabulous Hawaii!
A travelogue not only makes for a dull movie, it makes for dull verse development in a lyric. Look at this lyric summary:
Verse 1: Police brutality is a common problem in large cities.
Refrain: Streets are turning deadly in the dark.
Verse 2: Car bombs are becoming more common as a terrorist weapon.
Refrain: Streets are turning deadly in the dark.
Verse 3: More prostitutes carry the AIDS virus every year.
Refrain: Streets are turning deadly in the dark.
What's going on here? What does police brutality have to do with car bombs or prostitutes with AIDS? Nothing, except that they are all part of fabulous Streets are turning deadly in the dark. Aside from their connection to the refrain, the elements have no natural relationship — they don't belong together.
Verse development should mean verse relationship. Your verses should have a good reason to hang out together. When verses are in the same lyric only because you're taking a tour of the title, you likely have a travelogue on your hands.
Okay, so no one would actually write something like that, right? Wrong. In fact, it happens all the time — all too often in songs with serious political, ethical, or religious messages. This series of ideas is typical:
Verse 1: We're screwing up our planet.
Refrain: We're losing the human race.
Verse 2: We're killing each other in stupid wars.
Refrain: We're losing the human race.
Verse 3: We ignore our poor and homeless.
Refrain: We're losing the human race.
No matter how well written and interesting these verses get, the basic defect remains: The verses don't work together to accumulate power — they are simply a travelogue of human ineptitude. Important ideas deserve the most powerful presentation you can muster.
Your lyric accumulates power when your verses work together — using each verse to prepare what comes next. It's like starting avalanches. If you go a third of the way up the mountain and start three separate avalanches from different spots, you'll cause some damage to the town below, but not nearly as much as if you'd gone to the top and rolled one snowball all the way down. Speed and power accumulate and sweep everything away. The town is devastated. The boxes gain weight and power as the snow plummets down the mountain.
In a travelogue, all the boxes are the same size.
There's no real connection (other than the title) between the verses. The second box is isolated from the first and third. It's certainly a way to give us a new look at the title, but at the cost of forward momentum and accumulating power and weight. Although the strategy can work, it isn't optimum.
Let's get to work on verse development. We'll start by putting together a travelogue (on a serious subject), and then we'll try to fix it. Let's work with the idea of cycles of violence, using “Chain Reaction” as a title. Here's a starting verse and chorus:
Verse 1
Louis ducks behind the door
Patient as a stone
Listens, braces, hears the footsteps
Crip for sure and all alone
Steel barking, flashing, biting
Sinking to its home
Flesh to blood to heart to bone
Chorus
One more link in a chain reaction
Spinning round and round and round
A tiny step, a small subtraction
One more link in a chain reaction
Okay, gang warfare. One violent act will surely lead to another. But instead of using this scene to move us to the next act in the chain, we'll let the lyric make the easy move and randomly select another place. Here we are in some place like fabulous West Beirut:
Verse 2
Camille slips along the wall
Muslims stand their p
osts
Pulls the pin and lobs the metal
Perfect hook shot, crowd explodes
Spilling colors red and khaki
Gargles in their throats
Infidels and pagan hosts
Chorus
One more link in a chain reaction
Spinning round and round and round
A tiny step, a small subtraction
One more link in a chain reaction
However compelling the scene is, it is isolated; a single snowball a third of the way up the mountain. It's an equal-sized box, or at least a box that doesn't benefit from the weight of the first box. Because it relates to verse one only through the chorus, it doesn't build momentum. Its only power comes from what it is, not what it connects to. Verse one was a separate avalanche. It lent no power to verse two.
Now, one last stop in this travelogue of violence. How about racial hatred in fabulous old South Africa:
Verse 3
White boys rock the ancient Ford
Teeter-totter swing
Trapped inside, the children shudder
Afrikaner ditties ring
Drag the papa, slag the mama
Flames that lick and stink
Little buggers boil like ink
Chorus
One more link in a chain reaction
Spinning round and round and round
A tiny step, a small subtraction
One more link in a chain reaction
It's not that a lyric like this has no power, it just doesn't have the power it could have. Even when each scene in a travelogue is effectively presented, there is less total impact than there could have been if each verse had carried over into the next, accumulating power and momentum.
The test is to look at the verses without the chorus. Without knowing that all three events take place in fabulous “Chain Reaction,” we wouldn't have a clue what's going on: