Part of being an aspiring songwriter is about taking chances. You win some...but you lose more frequently. I will be the first to admit that I don't play the games, I don't rub elbows, I don't drop names or boast about my writing. I respect how busy industry professionals are and, let’s be honest, we know how … persistent amateur songwriters can be, so I don’t want to bother anyone by constantly trying to schmooze or ‘get my foot in the door’. I am just me. I am just a country girl finding joy in something that I truly love and every now and then, I take a chance to share that joy with others.
Several weeks ago, I took a chance and I got one of those rare wins with the American Songwriter Red Flags promo lyric contest. Because of that, I got really excited about writing again, so I took another chance and sent one of the complete songs that I have gotten the best feedback on to a publisher.
I sent Long Island. If you visit my Instagram, you'll see a video of me playing it in the Bluebird Cafe open mic. After I played it there, multiple people, including a touring artist found me to tell me that they loved it. One lady stated "Kenny Chesney needs to record that" ... well, the hook is "I'm cryin' in a long island" so I doubt that is one a man will ever want to sing but that comment was the first time anyone had that much of a reaction to anything I wrote.
I posted Long Island a few years ago with a Youtube video and I was feeling good about it, so I sent it off for a critique. Songwriters....you already know how this goes. They didn't like the melody. That's more than fair because I have never claimed to be a musician. Never ever. There is a reason that my email is "justlyrics...", and that's because I love the lyrical aspect of writing. But I also took it to heart and spent years trying different things to change it, which, since I only have a handful of chords in my back pocket, probably didn't yield the results expected when someone says that you need to change the melody.
But here I was, excited and sending the "new version" off to a publisher. Any guesses how that went? This time, they didn't like it...any of it. In fact, the only line they liked was a line that the previous reader had stated didn't belong in the song.
I was, bummed, but again, they pointed out the melody lacking a modern feel and they weren't wrong. That made me think back to the origin of the song. I posted that I wrote it after a bad day. The whole story is...I wrote it after a bad audition. I finally had worked up the nerve to try out for a writer round since a few of my open mics had gone well, and it was...a disaster. You could tell almost everyone in the audition was looking to be the next big star, most of them were pursuing music degrees or recording albums… and there I was, little ole me with my guitar ...I just wanted to share my songs.
When I got the feedback from the publisher, I decided that, since changing it didn't help, I wanted to re-record it with the original feel. I wanted to record the song how I wrote it because it doesn't need to be commercial, it just needs to be the song it was meant to be. I'll still play it out...if I ever play out again...and as long as one or two people enjoy it, that's all that matters. So do the thing, take the chance, and trust that it will lead you to where you are meant to be.
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