Great choice with Steve. Wonderful arrangement! Love the pizzicato and trills on the strings. The instruments sound great, without ever getting in front of the vocals.
The music box introduction is really effective.
As usual Noel, your vocals are a perfect fit for the lyrics - expressive and filled with joy.
One small nit - the lyric:
And the smiles I keep growing
Were they wings, I would flyAre the smiles growing in size, or quantity? On first listen, I imagined you were referring to a garden of smiles, which certainly matches the whimsy of the song. But then I was puzzled why you could fly if they were wings. Was it because they would be so large (there goes the garden metaphor) or because you had many wings like a seraphim (again... an interesting visual).
Yes, I overthink things.
In any event, perhaps a more mundane image would work better (even if it breaks the fourth wall):
Like a light within me glowing
As I sing you this lullabyeYeah, I'm a terrible person for suggesting lyrics to a wonderful song. So much for starting the new year with a fresh start.
Anyway:
lovely song, well sung. Excellent job, as usual, made even more sweet with Steve's arrangement.
Hi David,
Happy New Year! I'm guessing that it's probably January 1 in the US now.
Thank you for your comments. I always look forward to reading what you write. I have no problem at all with what you say. I long ago passed being emotionally tied to any of my material
Believe it or not, you've homed in on one of two pairs of lines that caused me the greatest amount of thinking! That's pretty amazing of you to do that. It might also be an indication that the lines are not working as well as I'd hoped -- I'll put that thought on the shelf for the moment, though.
I hear what you are saying. For me, the notion was a garden of smiles (hence "growing") and if each one of these smiles became a tiny set of wings, there would be be enough resultant lifting force from a 1,000 'smiles turned to wings' that I'd have lift-off. Since the physics worked in my head, I went with that concept.
Then I thought about how I might add a touch of quaintness to the concept of a garden of flowering smiles turning into wings. The subjunctive mood seemed to be the way to go since this structure only happens occasionally in today's language.
https://www.grammar-monster.com/glossary/subjunctive_mood.htm- For example: If I say, "I wish that I was a butterfly", it's a straightforward clause. However, I can amplify the sense of wishing by turning it into the subjunctive mood. The clause then becomes, "I wish that I were a butterfly", where "were" is the subjunctive form of the past tense of 'to be'.
That was how my lyric journey started. To get to...
And the smiles I keep growing
Were they wings, I would fly
...I travelled the following road over the course of about a week.
I started out by writing out in full, what I'd like to cover on the two lines... that is...
And the smiles I keep growing
If each smile was a set of wings then I could fly
- Even though I quite like a long phrase or two in my lyrics, as you've noted in the past, that sentence was a bit too bulky for me to fit in the small space that had been determined by verse one lyrics.
Next, I changed the sentence to subjunctive mood to add a smidgeon of antiquity.... "If each smile were a set of wings, then I could fly".
Now I needed to condense it to fit musically. This led to contracting "I could" and then sentence inversion and finally, while staying steadfast with the subjunctive mood, I arrived at...
And the smiles I keep growing
Were each one a set of wings, then I'd fly
From the above, I arrived at the penultimate...
And the smiles I keep growing
Were they wings, I could fly
...and ultimately this led to...
And the smiles I keep growing
Were they wings, I would fly
I felt a sense of accomplishment when I made it to here because these two lines had been floating around in my head for a long time by this stage.
- ** 'could' actually works better for meaning than 'would' because it implies wishful thinking and this resonates better with the subjunctive mood. I was torn, though, because I liked the alliteration that 'would' brought to the words. In the end, I decided to go with the more musical sounding lyrics (i.e. alliteration) rather the those that align with better semantics.
I'm not trying to convince you that I'm right or wrong because at the end of the day, none of that matters to me. It's a song. I gave it my all as I was writing it, and now that it's done, I can move on to the next one. I wrote the above because (a) you isolated one of the two sections that I really struggled with and (b) I thought that you might like to know the short-story version of the process that got me to the final product.
Thank you for your generous review and I sincerely appreciate the springboard that your comments gave me.
Last, I agree with you 1,000%. Steve is an amazing arranger... but then you are no slouch in that department, either
Thanks again,
Noel
P.S. Just in case you're curious, the second section that I struggled with were the two lines..
- I hope that life is gracious
And that you’ll out-shine the sun
P.P.S. I suspect that I might over-think things, too
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