I’m in the shower gettin’ my suds on…
Suddenly, that Sirius XM chick grabbed my attention with something she said….
She flirted with me right through the shower curtain.
Smokey voice and all.
Yeah well… she wasn’t actually standing there.
She was in my iPhone’s Sirius XM app up on the window sill.
Still, she flirted with me.
Said she’d reveal which band, surprisingly, started out as a blues band then switched to pop and had tremendous success.
Got my attention.
Fact is she said it was coming up right after Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive.
Scrubbed my … hair…
No bon Jovi.
Did a shave…
No Bon Jovi.
Stayed in overtime for the deluxe wash.
There never was no Bon Jovi. And no satisfying the teaser she put out.
I grumbled, “Screw that.”
Jumped in my clothes and got the “h” out of there to go do some writing.
That kind’a teasing might work for some people, not this gringo.
Point is, in our songwriting we want to tease a listener along, to keep them in the story, but it’s not the infinity song.
Eventually we have to come to a pay-off or a point.
We don’t want to flirt like Marlboro Mary did, or whoever the DJ was that day.
If at a gig for instance, you’re risking people getting up and walking out.
Or worse…
Start chattin’ at the tables.
Once one table does, they all follow suit.
Then you got to work to get them back.
Thing is, there’s a few common mistakes I’ve seen writers make, both lyrically and musically, that makes a listener feel like I did with the Bon Jovi thing.
You don’t want that in your tunes, and you won’t if you pick up on how to keep listener’s from checking out mentally with your tunes in one of the upcoming issues of Tune Booster.
Until then…
Keep writing from the heart.