Carosel: keep it simple, stupid

Carosel – I’m Sorry (Official Video) from carosel on Vimeo.   A friend tipped me off about this band, actually from my neck of the woods in Dublin. I haven’t seen them live nor know their work. All I can say is that there are times when you stand back and let the songwriting do [...]

Interview on Club97 radio Friday March 25

If you’re into the Internet radio scene and dance music, you might want to check Club97 radio, transmitting from New Jersey. It’s run by Mike Delaney, the former president of the 2 Unlimited fan club in the US, and who has been following the dance, Eurodance, techno and House scene for more years than we’d [...]

Eurovision: the executive summary

Image via Wikipedia It must be said: Germany’s entry, “Satellite” by Lena, was a very so-so song, and it wasn’t exactly an electric vocal performance. Strange that they received so many votes, although this sort of thing is said every year. But what about the lyrics? A research and semantics laboratory had the fun idea [...]

What does it take to write songs for name artists?

I took some time at Midem 2010 to put a question to David Stark, publisher of SongLink. His tipsheet provides some of the best tips in the business, hooking up major artists with songs. The “names” have included Tina Tuner, James Blunt, Kim Wilde and many others. Publishers and songwriters use SongLink obviously to get [...]

Men at Work slam plagiarism ruling

The unpredictable nature of plagiarism cases was proved again when it was ruled that Men at Work would have to pay out between 40-60% of earnings from their anthemic comedy song, “Down Under”. The case was brought by the music company Larrikin, which bought the rights to the Australian scout song “Kookaburra Sits in the [...]

George Harrison: Filling in the gaps

Image via Wikipedia There is much talk at the moment about the George Harrison “track” that was featured on British radio recently. The story is that Beatle biographer Hunter Davies came across a scrap of paper with some Harrison lyrics, “Silence (Is Its Own Reply)”, speculated to be about his relationship with John Lennon. During [...]

Dana Winner: “If You Want to Know Me”

Amazon.co.uk WidgetsI just noticed that Dana Winner’s new album, “Between Now and Tomorrow”, has been released featuring “If You Want to Know Me” with lyrics by me. The album features English versions of a similar album released in the Benelux, and was recorded largely for release in her “second home”, South Africa. But this is [...]

RIP: Vic Mizzy, writer of “Addams Family” theme

Like many people, I would walk home from school singing daft theme tunes from television. The writer of two of these, the “Addams Family” theme and “Green Acres”, has just died in Los Angeles at the age of 93. Mizzy was the master of silly but catchy tunes, and was kept busy well into his [...]

Twitter. Yeah, me too

I was on Twitter again last night, and I must say that the sheer number of posts about lyrics is phenomenal. So I did what I have been humming and hawing about for some time, I opened an A_Lyric Twitter account. Their widget (on the right column) is buggy. So to hook up with me, [...]

US band undertakes to co-write song via Twitter

OK, it’s a bit gimmicky but it could be interesting. US band Of a Revolution has launched a call to co-write a song on Twitter. They are asking people to submit lines that they will choose and collate and chop up into verses and choruses. Said frontman Marc Robege in Billboard magazine: “I do a [...]