floyd,

The first thing that I was struck by when ‘Still Drinking’ started playing was the production quality of the instruments. It’s fantastic. The overall sound has a clarity and spaciousness that makes it sound like it’s come straight from the mixing desk of somewhere like Beaird Music. Then your vocals arrived and, if it’s at all possible, the production polish sparkled even more. I don’t know what you’ve done but the end result that I’m hearing through my headphones right now is 100% quality, through and through.

I love this arrangement. The sonic texture you’ve created by using the slightly unresolved sound of extended chords showcases the melancholy of the lyrics perfectly. To my mind, this is a perfect example of how to use prosody in the most sophisticated way possible.

As with so many of your songs, after I had finished listening, I ended up being inspired by yet another journey of lyric discovery. In this instance, it was your use of the word ‘whiskey’, and how you cleverly made a new verb out of an existing noun, that set me off on the journey. If you’re interested, read on! If not, it’s probably best to stop here smile

The journey…

One of the things that I’ve noted over the years is that many of yesterday’s lyricists fearlessly invent words and expressions to suit their need. Such literary inventions are called neologisms. Your ‘Still Drinking’ expression of “...to whiskey myself blind” is such a neologism.

As I thought more about where I’d heard invented words, William Shakespeare, Ira Gershwin and Cole Porter sprang to mind. So, using Google, I searched using “words invented by shakespeare” as my query. This led me to the below site.


At the top of the above webpage, the introduction read,

Quote:
The English language owes a great debt to Shakespeare. He invented over 1700 of our common words by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising words wholly original.

Hmmmm.... it seems that you are in excellent company with "to whiskey"!

Next I unleashed Google to find some lyrics of Cole Porter. That was when I came across,

Originally Posted By: Cole Porter ‘It’s De-Lovely”
Verse
I feel a sudden urge to sing the kind of ditty that invokes the Spring
So, control your desire to curse while I crucify the verse
This verse I've started seems to me the Tin Pan-tithesis of melody
So to spare you all the pain, I'll skip the darn thing and sing the refrain

Refrain: First A-Section
The night is young, the skies are clear
And if you want to go walkin', dear
It's delightful, it's delicious, it's de-lovely

I smiled when I read the above for two reasons: one, the cleverness of using the made-up word ‘tin-pan-tithesis’ for ‘antithesis’; two, the brilliance with which he has set up the meaning of his newly invented word ‘de-lovely’. By pre-empting his use of ‘de-’ as a prefix, Porter has given 'de-lovely' a meaning that's associated with both ‘delightful’ and ‘delicious’. How skilful is that! In this sense, Porter has taken ‘de-’ the prefix into brand new unchartered territory.

In 'Still Drinking', you've set up the meaning of "to whiskey" equally well so that when we, the listener, hear it, it sounds perfectly natural, like a word that already exists, and its meaning is fully understood. Outstanding stuff!

Then, as is often the way with coincidence, the day after I started thinking about your “to whiskey” neologism, while I was driving to work, Stevie Wonder started singing on the radio… ♫♫yesterme, yesteryou, yesterday♫♫. When I returned home, I immediately set Youtube into action and found...


A little further research uncovered that this song was written by Ron Miller and Bryan Wells in 1969.

What amazed me about these lyrics is that when I looked them up on the internet, by the end of the song, the following six words had been invented…

  • yesterme, yesteryou, yesterglow, yesterfools, yesterdreams, yesterlove

Moreover, every one of these words made perfect sense within the context of the lyrics. The way that Miller and Wells have created these words and have then driven their meaning by relating them all to “yesterday”, in addition to using the perspective of past tense, is formidable. Even though I’ve heard Stevie Wonder sing this song hundreds of times over the years, I have never once fully appreciated the lyric-writing skill on show.

So, at the end of the beginning of this journey, I want to say, Thank you. Once again you've inspired me to take a road that I would never have discovered on my own. Next time I write some lyrics, I'm going to see if I can create some new words!

May Christmas bring lots of good tidings your way,
Noël

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