George MacDonald once remarked, ‘If my dog can’t bark I’m not going to sit up and bark for him.’ His point was that art should speak for itself and not need explaining. ‘If I draw a horse’, he argued, ‘there’s not much point in writing “this is a horse” on my bad picture: if you’ve never seen a horse, simply labelling the picture isn’t going to help much.’ For this reason, I hesitate to ‘explain’ my songs—they are quite capable of barking for themselves—but also because when I was younger I went to numerous ‘Christian’ concerts where the artists would preach between the songs for longer than they sang. All a bit depressing. Someone once sagely observed to me: ‘It’s because the songs aren’t saying what they want to say.’
The art of the song
So I could simply stop here but, on the other hand, I am a teacher and often do courses on songwriting so I thought I’d make a few comments about the songs on Good—not to explain them but to give some keys to unlock them and maybe help you to develop your songwriting skills.
Musical autobiography
In my view, the best songs are in some sense autobiographical as—because they articulate real, shared human experience—they resonate with how we all feel at times as humans; an honest personal story always intrigues a listener and draws them in. I highlight the word ‘feel’ because no one likes being preached at or told what to do. Even worse, no one likes to listen to songs about some unattainable, golden, fairytale future that has no contact points with our messy, mundane existence. That just makes us feel even more unworthy and depressed. The golden rule in songwriting is to write from the heart and express feelings such that other hearts resonate; to share feelings rather than ideas.
Beautiful
This inevitably makes one feel vulnerable as a songwriter but it is only by being vulnerable that songs will resonate with listeners. So I hesitated, for example, to include the song Beautiful on this album. In it, someone—perhaps a parent—is reflecting on the suicide of a teenage girl: ‘She was beautiful, a light in our darkness. But in our fallen world we were foolish and blind . . . I hope she’ll forgive me when we meet again on the other side of life.’ Yet the song ends on a note of doubt: ‘if we meet again on the other side of life.’ Art should always ask questions rather than give trite answers. We grow spiritually by asking the right questions. I worry about people that think they have all the right answers about the mystery that is life.
Water Into Wine, Let There Be Light
The album opens with Water Into Wine, a song about ‘something that we lost along the way’, a loss that seems to characterise some streams of contemporary Christianity, and is followed by Let There Be Light. The latter, of course, harks back to the words of God reported in Genesis chapter 1 but it is more about the present than the past. As someone wisely remarked, ‘a myth tells us how things will always be, not how they once were.’ There is always a snake, for example, that whispers in our ears. So the song is not about the past but is a prayer for the present: God knows, we need to pray for light in these dark days.
Good
The title track, Good, is one of my favourite songs, not least because I sang it at the wedding of two of my children! It is a protest against the negativity often expressed towards physicality, particularly sex, in the Christian world as if God only liked us for what we might become one day become rather than who we are now—as if when God said, ‘it is good’ (as in the previous song) God didn’t really mean it. The whole album reflects this thought—that creation, life, physicality, and humanity are gifts from God. It is why I love the album artwork by the very talented Vladimir Ochman: there is a certain lightness and innocence in his design that reflects exactly this sense of celebration of God’s gift of life—a sentiment Daniel Kyzlink and I tried to express in the song Celebration—a gift that we need to receive as children.
A Dream of a Blessed Spirit
But, as noted in relation to Beautiful, life has its dark moments that are woven into the tapestry. So I chose to follow that song with W. B. Yeats’s early poem A Dream of a Blessed Spirit—a ‘trifling little thing’, as he put it, that he wrote in the late 1890s. As Yeats was Irish, of course it had to have an Irish feel! It is the second song about death on this album (but don’t tell anyone or they won’t want to buy it), notable in that Yeats, a Protestant, was writing about Mother Mary welcoming a wealthy philanthropic lady into heaven. He notes that ‘still she goes with footsteps wary, full of earth’s old timid grace’.
The Angel Gabriel
As I was raised a Protestant myself, the feminine side of God was ignored in my younger days and songs about Mary were off limits so it was not until later in life that I fell in love with the Basque Christmas carol, The Angel Gabriel. Such songs are often confined to Christmas releases when the general public are in fairy-tale mode. I just love it because it underlines the amazing part that Mary played in the story—and that God is not male. I particularly love Daniel Kyzlink’s bass and string arrangements on this track, played beautifully in baroque style (not too much vibrato) by Alžběta Poukarová Rolečková and Zdeněk Svozil. The icing on the cake is Jules Rendell’s tender vocals. Maybe it’ll be a Christmas hit one day!
Jacob’s Prayer
I recorded Jacob’s Prayer in 2008 for the album Acoustic Communion. That CD was a somewhat low-budget affair recorded mostly in my dining room! I’ve always wanted to re-record this song, partly because when I play it live now it has more of a jazz/swing groove and I wanted a recording that reflected that, but also because it’s my most autobiographical song. Like Jacob, the swindler and deceiver, I’m aware that at times I’ve made bad choices in my life and I’m a far-from-perfect human being but, like Jacob, I had a remarkable spiritual experience when I was hitch-hiking around Norway in 1975 with my beloved Gibson J45 (yes, I am that old). I love Jacob’s story as it is a reminder that even ordinary, flawed people like you and me can have a divine encounter. That said, it begs the question, ‘How can heaven be so near when I’m so far, far away?’ Daniel Kyzlink’s piano playing on this track is extraordinary!
Your Name and Bourée in E-minor
I hesitated to put Your Name on this album. I confess that I’m a bit anti-religious and prefer to think of my work as ‘spiritual’: I hesitated because this song has often been used in the context of Christian worship services and I wondered if it would fit with the other tracks. However, this song means a lot to me because it paints a picture of the person who said, ‘If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.’ When I sing it, I often think of G. F. Watts’ picture, ‘Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet’. When Pavol Hoďa played the saxophone part on this track, all my doubts evaporated. What a player!
J. S. Bach used to write the letters ‘S. D. G.’ (‘Soli Dei Gloria’, ‘to God alone be the glory’) on many of his manuscripts, so this last piece is a fitting postscript. I first came across this well-known Bourée in E-minor when I was about twenty; I hope you enjoy two minutes of swung Bach!
