by Johanna Warren
I wonder if I will ever stop cringing when the title “singer-songwriter” is employed in reference to me. It makes me feel squeamish, like I am slitting open a frog belly in Bio Lab. Strange, really, that I should find the term so nauseating, when on paper it is an undeniably apt description of what I do: I write songs, and I sing them. Perhaps I would not be so troubled by the label were it not for the objectionable imagery that immediately springs to mind: the dim lamp-lit glow of the coffeehouse, the craning neck of the microphone, and the dubious character positioned behind it, closing his eyes as he hits his favorite diminished chord, contorting his face into a carefully plotted map of human anguish.
“O, the honesty, the bare-boned truth in his heartbroken lyrics!” murmur both enthralled audience members. For fear of slipping into a diabetic coma, I quietly sprint for the door.
This person bores me, probably because without hearing the first syllable of his song I would bet my lucky penny I know what he is singing about: sex, love, or a relationship (three heads of the same monster, really, but I will acknowledge the distinctions, blurry as they may be). With remarkably few exceptions, every song by every singer-songwriter in history has concerned itself with this topic. Observe the dismaying statistics shown in the diagram below:
Why is this one concentrated area of interest so exponentially more fascinating to the singer-songwriter’s brain than the infinity of other fascinating things? Romance is interesting, yes, but ultimately, so common! How many times in the history of the universe has the sexual act been committed? How many relationships have blossomed; how many have crumbled? In the history of the universe, how many tears have rolled down how many cheeks in the name of unrequited affections? It is nearly impossible to find new insights into such an exhausted subject, but that doesn’t seem to deter the masses from earnestly repeating what has already been said a million times before.
If originality is something to be desired, as it is in every other art form, I can’t imagine why singer-songwriters limit themselves in this way. Innovation would be far easier, and the resulting songs probably more worthwhile, if we drew our inspiration from things less ordinary than sex. Anything.
Why not polar bears, for instance? These giants of the arctic tundra are shrouded in mystery, just waiting to inspire great poetry. White, with black skin beneath—ample material for metaphorical speculation. They are cute and cuddly from a distance, but they’ll rip your face off if you get too close—a lot like love, really. They are also rapidly disappearing, but apparently no one in the singing-songwriting world can be bothered, as the following diagram illustrates:
**Snow Patrol’s 1998 album, Songs for Polar Bears, has been intentionally omitted from these statistics, as it features songs entitled “One Hundred Things You Should Have Done In Bed” and “Sticky Teenage Twin” but makes not one mention of an actual bear.
To remedy this distressing situation, I propose a revolution of priorities. Instead of trying and inevitably failing to find something remotely original to say about the same tired material that has been sung and re-sung for centuries, it is time to force ourselves to look a little closer—to find new sources of inspiration in this dazzlingly complex universe. Instead of re-tracing the footprints of millions of singer-songwriters past, we must rejoice in going where no one has gone before, like a child bounding across an untouched field of freshly fallen snow.
(Joanna Warren is half of STICKLIPS, along with Japanese noise aficionado Jonathan Nocera, producing music that has been likened to 'a bunny with cyborg implants'. You can find her, him, and it at http://www.myspace.com/sticklips )