THEY wrote the songs, now five of our biggest songwriters tell the stories behind the nominations for next Monday's APRA Song of the Year
Better Than The John Butler Trio Writer: John Butler John Butler: With Better Than I started by mumbling and scatting the vocal melody and rhythm and slowly but surely the mumbles turned into words and the words started making some sense.Once I got the line "You could be better than that" the whole concept/subject of the song unfolded pretty quickly and I was able to engage a little more of my cognitive songwriting skills to what I can only describe as the ritual of songwriting.By the end of the process it was nothing like a reggae song and turned into one of the "poppier" songs I've written. Who would have thought a reggae-influenced song played on a banjo would have such a great life in the world of commercial radio? That's what I love about music - the song kinda does what it wants no matter what somebody, even the songwriter, sometimes may think it needs. Lost and RunningPowderfingerWriters: Jonathan Coghill/John Collins/Bernard Fanning/Ian Haug/Darren Middleton Darren Middleton: I was driving one afternoon and I just started humming the chorus. Very quickly, the lyrics came. So I was in the car singing over and over, "I'm still lost and running".I went straight home, grabbed my guitar and found the music to go with that melody. The rest of the lyrics and verses fell from thought to paper within half an hour. It was one of those songs everyone seemed to like. Bern touched up a couple of the lyrics, Ian and JC added a kind of Stooges bass part, Cogs his drum feel, and there we were. Song completed. It's been kind of funny playing the song live. Some of us were not that enthused at first because the song is quite different, quite simple, as opposed to the usual heavier-themed songs we do. It's not going to win song of the year, but hey, we still have fun with it. 20 Good Reasons Thirsty Merc Writer: Rai Thistlethwayte Rai Thistlethwayte: Just after Christmas '04, I was breaking up with a girl I'd been seeing for a few months. We were definitely in love, but I couldn't hold it all together. My life was going a certain way, with momentum in my music career and travels, and trying to balance that stuff with our relationship, and also that I'm probably a bit insane generally. Soon after I went overseas, and a definite feeling and experience I had in New York led me to finding some lyrics that became the verses in this song. I was standing on a downtown Manhattan street with all these people getting on with their lives, running around at a million miles an hour, andI felt so lost and out of sync among all the hysteria. I thought about losing this girl because of what seemed to be my selfish actions (my music career versus settling into something in my life back home). At that moment on the street (this part is described clearly in the second verse) time literally seemed to stand still, kind of like the slow-motion one feels as they drive past a car crash. I had made a mistake. Not only that, I felt like my control of this situation was beyond me. There was so much unknown. I guess I was asking myself, anyone, a higher power, even just the towering buildings above me: "Why do things have to go this way sometimes?" Listening now, it makes me sad at things I've lost, but also that we need to enjoy the time we have and make the most of it, so it has a bit of a double sentiment now. 1234 Feist Writers: Sally Seltmann/Leslie Feist Sally Seltmann: I always thought one of my favourite Sonic Youth songs Sweet Shine contained the lyrics "deep down you're just a little hallway". This, I thought, was lyrical genius, and led to my obsession with hallways. I discovered I had misheard the lyrics, the correct ones being "deep down you're just a little whorey!" Despite this sweet naivety, I am happy to say 1234 was born in a hallway.
A few years ago, the hallway of my house became the home to my piano. It was there I sat, and started singing, "1234, tell me that you love me more". A really good friend had told me she was leaving her husband. I am hopelessly romantic, so news like that made me think, "But why? Surely you can try to stay together?" I was also thinking you can't buy back the love you have when you first fall in love. Within 20 minutesI had finished writing the song. The only problem was I thought the chorus was a complete rip-off of Feist's Mushaboom. I played the song to myself a few times, and soon forgot about it. I happened to get signed to Feist's Canadian label and ended up on tour supporting her. I loved Feist. She reminded me of my sister; I learnt so much from watching her sing her beautiful songs. On the last night of the tour I played 1234 for her and we recorded it into her laptop. A few months later I heard she had started playing it live and the crowd really loved it! Feist emailed, asking whether she could add a few different lyrics. I loved her new lyrics, and totally understood she needed to do this in order to have more of a connection with the song. This is where 1234 became a co-write. When I heard her version, I was blown away. She had given it so much energy. Then came the iPod commercial, the chart ratings, the Grammy nomination, the Juno awards - the list goes on. I am excited that she has performed it live on Sesame Street and can't believe that a little song I wrote in a hallway has gone on to become such a huge worldwide hit. Straight Lines Silverchair Writers: Daniel Johns/Julian Hamilton Daniel Johns: I'm genuinely proud of this song. I wanted the Young Modern album to be a piece with artistic credibility and something with really powerful intent, but I also wanted it to be Silverchair's pop record. Straight Lines started when I was doing a writing session with (Preset) Julian (Hamilton). I'd written some stuff with Julian back in England, but we didn't feel like we'd achieved what we were capable of. So we rescheduled and Julian came up to my house in Newcastle. I was fiddling around on the guitar and he was on the piano. Julian started playing something similar to what the intro is. Then I just took it off to my private quarters and started to think about how to melodically challenge it. The chorus was done straight away. The lyrics were done quick, pretty much on the spot, so we could demo it. Then I started thinking about the song conceptually. Because of what it was about and straight lines and it all felt mathematical, we had to kind of shape the pulse of that thing and figure out how we were going to build the momentum throughout the song in some way that felt like a natural momentum, rather than "the orchestra comes in here" or "this is the chorus" or "this should happen here". I wanted it to have this sense of hopeless optimism because it was written about a pretty strange time in my life. I wanted to start out as damaged goods, then get stronger and stronger. By the end it's slamming. But the song is basically a tale of hopeless optimism, or eternal optimism, or delusion mixed with optimism. It was an easy one to articulate to the band how I wanted it to be. Rather than: "Imagine 17 revolving clarinets moving circularly around the vocals." It was a bit more like: this song is like a big rock and roll band with a modern pulse. It's just going to be totally tight and mathematic. It's not going to be whimsical, it's not going to be crazy. It's just going to be a song with a sentiment that we're going to be proud of and a song that felt like, "We're back, biatch!" I can guarantee there wasn't one person in the band who assumed it was going to be a smash hit. We just knew it was the most obvious single for us. We knew we didn't have another choice, really. We'd been away for so long, so I didn't know what the perception of my songs were, or what people expected. We still can't believe how well that record did because, especially me, so much turmoil and bulls--- went on throughout the whole thing, and I was a little stressed monkey by the end. To have it received like that made it kind of worth it. Cameron Adams' verdict: forget about Thirsty Merc, Lost and Running is Powderfinger on autopilot and 1234 is Australian by default. Better Than is a good song but Straight Lines is an instant Australian classic that deserves an APRA nod.
