Lyrics in Progress

A political song, for a change. I won't bore you with any details. I simply put down what goes on in my mind when I'm hearing the news about Palestine, the Ukraine, Syria, and so on. This is just the chorus that I'm a little proud of:

too little truth in your countless words
your sympathy lacks honesty
too many lies told with faithful eyes
your diplomacy pure hypocrisy

You'll find the rest of the lyrics where you find all things Harmsen (not yet, though...)

Oh, lest I forget: originally I intended to call the song "foreign affairs" - but then I decided that I would write a completely different text to that particular title ;-)

... yet only two more lyrics 'officially' published so far. For a singer-songwriter(!) I wrote three lyrics, "much too long", "ride into the sun", and "will have to make it through the winter". A fourth text we wrote together "I'm so lonely" - he wrote the first verse and gave it the title, I added two more verses in the same manner. Quite simple, yet should work nicely:

I'm so lonely
I'm so lo-honely
I'm so lonely tonight
 
I'm so needy
so very needy
I'm so needy tonight
 
need your lovin'
I need your lovin'
need your lovin' tonight

As for now I only published two other lyrics on my web site that I've written in the meantime: "leave me in the cold", and "gonna have a ball". I actually wrote the latter to match Jürgen's music (that's the singer-songwriter I just mentioned). But then I found that the content or message of my text did not at all go together with the music's mood so I wrote "ride into the sun" instead.

I had two verses and a bridge. When I read the bridge I discovered that the meter was very much like that of the verses although there were more syllables. I simply had sort of cut the lines in halves so I hadn't noticed. Somewhere in between I had altered the rhyme pattern of the verses from AABB to ABAB. The re-edited bridge actually also had AABB it now seemed. So I ended up in having three verses, the last one with a different rhyme structure. I could change the other two verses yet again, but then I decided that I'll simply let the third verse be a little like a bridge. I imagine it sung slightly differently, maybe just with a higher pitch. These are the verses:

since your lover left you you've run out of luck
next losing your job nearly finished you off
your friends let you down the day ill fate struck
it looks like you're mired in a personal trough

these days your life does not feel quite right
the few smiles you still get all somehow look fake
your dreams simply won't stand up to daylight
if this is a game you don't know what's at stake

in your dreams you are loved and a success at your job
what you set about doing you'd come out on top
in your dreams you're a hero in the thick of  (the) things*
you can be happy cause your dreams give you wings

"these days your life does not feel quite right" - 9 syllables, 9 or 11 syllables were the original lengths of the lines in the verses.

"in your dreams you are loved and a success at your job" - 13 syllables that can easily match the same meter if you make "in your", "you are", and "and a succ-" two, respectively three short notes instead of one longer note, thus corresponding to "these", "your", and "does". I had put the lines of the former bridge like this:

in your dreams you are loved

and a success at your job

and read the lines of the verses like this (the "|" indicating a little break):

these days your life | does not feel quite right

which could also be written as:

these days your life

does not feel quite right

Each line has two stresses: "dreams" - "loved", "-ess" - "job", "days" - "life", and "not" - "right" - which gives them a very similar rhythm.

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*without the "the" - "in the thick of THE things" - the meter in the second part of this line would be slightly off. I needed two unstressed syllables between "thick" and "things" to make it flow smoothly. Now it has become quite a tongue twister with four "th" in a row - at least for Germans, so I made the second "the" optional.

Yet another note:

I derived the first lines of the chorus, "three steps up - five steps down", from a German saying "ein Schritt vor, zwei Schritte zurück" (one step forward, two steps back). I don't know if there is an English equivalent. The meaning should be clear, anyway.

... that I will place right after the first chorus and BEFORE the third verse for obvious(?) reasons:

I'm hearing cheerful laughter
and also angry shouts
coming from the playground
a lively mix of sounds
I watch a couple holding hands
I see a young girl cry
an old man's smiling to himself
I won't get to know why

You see, "on the human condition" is NOT supposed to be a song about people dying, quite the contrary! Therefore, I needed a bridge that deals with having fun or - more broadly - with being alive. But now the bridge doesn't lead over to the chorus so I had to place it before the last verse:

a new motorbike
that ran smooth and fast
smashed its driver on a (concrete) wall
some old nasty crook
enjoys his old age
made millions by means that appall

It follows the chorus that might (should?) be repeated:

some go too soon
some die too late
call it bad luck
or call it fate
it's all part of
the human state

Now I thing the text is rounded out. Yet another 'carpe diem' lyric.