Hi Janice and Tom,

What a terrific song! Everything about this, from construction to presentation, delivers the verdict “professional all the way”.

I apologise for taking so long to get this comment posted. Word tells me that I first started writing about “I-75” back on July 19. I clearly remember sitting down, typing, deleting, typing, deleting for 30 minutes or so and not getting anywhere. There are so many good things about this song that, at the time, I couldn't work out what I wanted to say. So I shelved what I'd written and decided to come back to it at a later time when my thinking was less cloudy.

Tonight when I re-listened and once again read through the lyrics, it was like sunshine. What stood out to me most is just how powerful the sequence of rhymes in “I-75” is.

Let me explain…

At one of the first Pat Pattison seminars I went to, Pat spoke about how it's possible to construct verses and choruses by simply deciding on a sequence of rhymes and then using a predetermined poetic meter to construct lines/phrases that incorporate the rhymes. Working this way, the chances of using fresh and strong rhymes are greatly enhanced. It's a sort of 'reverse engineering' approach to lyrics.

Quote:
For example say I want a 4-line verse that follows the poetic meter of 'Mary Had A Little Lamb' (that is 4 feet, 3 feet, 4 feet, 3 feet) and a rhyme scheme of ABAB. This could be the first verse of a song where I want to recall (say) a childhood fear of storms because I'm going to use it as a metaphor in the second verse.

For rhymes I could use something like...

blue skies
shaking
paralysed
breaking

These rhymes come across as interesting to me and seem to conjure up a story all on their own. They could then lead me onto maybe…

no blue skies
thunder shaking
I was paralysed
Heaven was breaking

The above, when being massaged into the 4-3-4-3 meter, might undergo some modifications and lead me to a verse and chorus of...

(VERSE)
Black had drowned the blue skies
The whole world was shaking
My legs and lungs were paralysed
Heaven and Hell were breaking
Horror was awakening

(CHORUS)
When the storm rages
And the winds howl
Say a prayer and remember
Sooner or later they'll blow away
And they'll leave behind them a brand new day


While there's heaps of room for improvement with the above, this seems to have some metaphoric potential for the ending of a hostile relationship. The important thing is that I've got something started and it all began with considering rhymes. As Pat says, “Don't be afraid to write crap. After all, crap is the best fertiliser.”



Back to “I-75”...

When I looked at the end-of-line rhymes for your song, I found

Originally Posted By: Tom and Janice
night
fight
couch
blouse
survive
I 75



How cool is that! The verse 1 "I-75" story is pretty much there at the end of the lines in rhyme. Lyrically, this packs a punch because the meaning of the words that fill the lines will be amplified by the message contained in the rhymes. This is excellent lyric crafting.

If one applies the same analysis to the other song sections, it's easy to see that the rhymes are the amplifiers of meaning and emotion. Very nicely done!

You've got my applause. I really enjoyed my listens.

All the best,
Noel



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