Like a Lover (a demo)

Clichés are death to good writing in any form. Songs, speeches, essays, newspaper articles, short stories or movies scripts. (I try like crazy to avoid them like the plague at all costs.)

Still, it’s hard to write a love song without slipping into the muck of overused and abused sayings. Like describing one’s love as deeper than the ocean or one that will last for all time; or describing your loved one as beautiful or like an angel.

So, I try to pay attention to those sentimental phrases trying to slip into my songs.

And on a personal note, it seems that folks automatically assume any love song I write is 1) biographical and 2) I’m writing about my wife or better be!

The denial of the personal angle is more difficult to make when, in fact, certain characteristics are strikingly familiar.

But using specific, concrete character traits is what makes writing come alive.

So, I often borrow characteristics from real people in order to take the descriptions in the song beyond the hackneyed. Melissa has come to understand that seeing one of your traits in a song is one of the prices you pay for being part of a songwriter’s life.

Aside from the character traits, there are several lines that I particularly like in this song. After establishing that “she” works hard for her money so she can afford her chardonnay, I almost chuckle when I sing:

And she says that I’m a bargain
given the costs of love these days.

 

And I do like the way the chorus builds off this woman’s different traits: worries like mother; gets excited like a child, et. al.

And if anyone mistakenly thinks the any of the man’s traits resemble moi, well, you are entitled to your own interpretation!

 

The above is just me and my guitar.

 

Like a Lover

she’s so predictable
she’s always on time
she makes her bed every morning
and takes her coffee out to the sunrise.

She works hard for her money
but she likes that chardonnay
And she says that I’m a bargain
given the costs of love these days.

(chorus):

she’s like a mother
when she worries
she’s like a child
when I come home
she’s like a lover
when a hard day is over
the way she quietly
closes the bedroom door

 

no one knows exactly
why she puts up with me
I can be a storm on the ocean
or an old cat stuck in a tree.

But she doesn’t like certain words
that fall out of my mouth
she says any educated fool
oughtta talk better than that

(chorus)
(bridge):

I’m not saying she’s an angel
can’t no saint can live with me
all I’m saying she’s something special
to have tamed the devil in me

(chorus)

 

 

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