With the exception of the title track Breathe, these songs are on the wacky side lyrically and, in the case of a couple of tunes, musically as well, while still maintaining a consistent melodic pop sound.

9 MP3 Songs
POP: Beatles-pop, POP: Quirky



Details:
Though I've had this film project idea in mind for several years, adding bits and pieces as time has gone by, not all of the songs have been around that long. In fact, I wrote Breathe just about a year ago. Some of the songs from my CD recorded last year called Mean With A Smile will be used in the film also. Some of the song ideas are not as far-fetched as they might seem upon first listening to them.

The songs are all based on some sort of life experience, as are most of the songs I've written. For instance, The Smirkers might seem light-hearted but it's about a pretty nasty habit, as far as I'm concerned, and was originally inspired by a community theatre director I had the misfortune to cross paths with at one point in my life. There's more of a fantasy element involved with Phi Kappa Paper Towels and Welcome To Blockhead's. Phi Kappa Paper Towels is purposely sang (sung?) somewhat poorly because it's supposed to be performed by a group of men whose fraternity is based on the theme that they've all accumulated an abundance of paper towels. While it's supposedly sang (sung?) by a lot of men, it's actually just me and the recording engineer both doing a few different voices. It was inspired by a former girlfriend's father.

Welcome To Blockhead's is very short and has a very oompah feel to it. It was inspired by a couple of different people. Feel To Go is another shorty, a recent composition, if you can call it that, inspired by an expression my work supervisor used a couple of times that struck me as a funny thing to say. He's Gone Missing is a very vocally oriented song. I suppose most of my songs are but this one is especially appealing in that respect, in my immodest view. I owe the idea for the third vocal part (the highest harmony on the line "we never knew he existed") to Stephen Arthur, one of the musicians on the project. Then, of course, there's the song Breathe, which was written in somewhat of a low key.

The song actually changes keys in the chorus, so I left that alone and just added a higher harmony. But the verse, which was really too low for my taste, needed something. So I decided to sing along an octave higher with the melody and managed to do so without going falsetto for some of the notes. The instrumental version of this song gave me a sense of satisfaction. My idea during the latter stages of the recording process was to add a higher lead guitar part to the already existing lower lead part. The notes were the same, only up an octave in vocal terms. So, in my mind, this echoed the musical theme of the vocal version. As for the lyrics, they were inspired by my fiance from China. Well, that's the lowdown. Me hopey you likey.