lipstick

Song 36/52: “Red Lipstick”

Lyrics:

Red lips sink ships, and turn a lot of heads
They stare, but who cares? I like wearing reds
Trends say red may scare the average guy
So I pull out the bullet, and proudly reapply

Chorus:
Give me scarlet, russet, crimson, vermilion
Cherry, berry, carnelian, persimmon
Paint it on me, lay it on thick
Paint it on me, my red lipstick

Boys say they won’t kiss my ruby mouth
They don’t really get what it’s about
Boys say they don’t want to make a mess
But if they want me, they’d want me nonetheless

(repeat chorus)

I’ve got so many shades
For all different days
Some are matte, some are glossy
Some are soft, some are bossy
I’ve got pride, I’ve got power
I am bright like a flower
And if you don’t wanna kiss
Then I guess I’m done with this

(repeat chorus)

 

Songwriting diary:

I wrote 90% of this song back in May, but set it aside (permanently, I thought) for two reasons. One was that I thought the chorus was too cloying, annoying, and repetitive. The other was that I’d set out to write a song about my love for red lipstick in general, and instead found myself writing about men’s reactions to red lipstick, which felt counter to what I was trying to do with the song.

However, over the months to come, this song kept coming back to haunt me, more than any other musical fragment I’d left behind. I realized that the traits I’d identified as “annoying” or “repetitive” in the chorus actually made it a bit of an earworm. I’ve never been very good at consistently writing “catchy” songs, and I think a huge part of that is how averse I am to being too repetitive (I think this comes from my parents lightly criticizing me for playing super-repetitive Regina Spektor songs on the piano all the time when I was a teen, lol). It was interesting that the very trait that’d worried me about the song was actually part of what made it great.

As for focusing too much on men’s reactions, I realized I could just lean into that aspect of the song and make it into a song that’s explicitly about men’s reactions to red lipstick, and my own reactions to those reactions. There’s no reason I need to write a magnum opus incorporating all my thoughts and feelings on red lipstick; I’ve referenced it in songs before and no doubt will again. Once I accepted that, I had no problem finishing the bridge and therefore finishing the song. Everything but the bridge is more-or-less unchanged from how I originally wrote it back in May.

---

Song 37/52: “Notice Me”

Lyrics:

I’ve got a poster of your face in my locker
And a collage of all your interviews
Everyone knows that you’re my favorite rocker
They’re always joking that I’m stalking you

I cut your girlfriend’s face out of a photo
And then I glued myself in perfectly
We’ve never met, and so I know that you don’t know
You’re gonna spend your fuckin’ life with me

I don’t mind waiting
I’ll follow you across state lines
To catch the show in Toledo
And see if I can finally make you mine

Chorus:
Notice me from the stage
Notice my lips, my hips, but not my age
And when the curtain falls and the show is through
Notice me, the way I notice you

Sure, there are boys who I could date with less trouble
They’re always laughing in the gym; they clog the halls
But they’re disasters made of swagger and stubble
They’ve got no class, they’ve got no charm at all

I don’t mind waiting
Until I’m 18, if I must
I’ll catch the show in Chicago
And on the Megabus, I’ll think of us

(repeat chorus)

The night gets dark
I watch the stars
No need to wonder where you are
Tonight it’s Milwaukee
Then off toward the Rockies
I’ll follow you far, I’ll follow you far

The night gets dark
I watch the stars
No need to wonder where you are
Tonight, Minnesota
And then South Dakota
I’ll follow you far, I’ll follow you far, so far

(repeat chorus)

 

Songwriting diary:

One day I walked down to the beach hoping to write some new lyrics, and on my way there, I thought about how much I like songs that start with a vocal line before any instrumentation comes in (the Beatles’ “You’re Gonna Lose That Girl” is an example), and how I hadn’t written a song like that in a while, so maybe I wanted to do that.

Once I found a seat at the beach, I pulled up a random word generator to get 3 words to inspire a song. The words this time were “substitute,” “object,” and “connection,” which made me think about parasocial relationships and how, when I was a teen (and even later), I’d often develop romantic obsessions with actors and musicians because it was easier and less vulnerable than pursuing someone I knew IRL.

I drafted these lyrics, and didn’t decide until about halfway through that it was going to be a song about a girl stalking her celeb crush. When the line about “the show in Toledo” came to me, it seemed right to mention other locations later on in the song, and her stalking him seemed like the most compelling way to do that.

Researching American geography was the most time-consuming part of this songwriting process; I had to figure out a route that made sense but that also included names of regions or cities that rhymed with each other. But it was a fun challenge, and I figured it out eventually!

---

Song 38/52: “I Could Not Write a Song This Week”

Lyrics:

I could not write a song this week
I could not rhyme, I could not think
I tried and tried to eke one out
But I was overcome with doubt

I could not write a song this week
I could not sing, I could not speak
But that’s just how it goes sometimes
And so I wrote these goofy lines

Some say that writer’s block doesn’t exist; it’s a hoax
And some say it’s par for the course for all creative folks
Whatever the answer, I know a block when I feel one
I’m writing and writing, and nothing I’m writing feels done

I could not write a song this week
My inspiration’s looking bleak
I barely leave the house, then I
Feel stuck, and then I wonder why

I could not write a song this week
I’m wondering if I’ve hit my peak
Should I cut myself some slack
Or just admit that I’m a hack?

Perfectionists find it depressing to make art that sucks
And sometimes I wish that I gave a bit less of a fuck
‘Cause judging my output is pointless – the point’s to have fun
The songs never have to be good; they just have to get done

I guess I wrote a song this week

 

Songwriting diary:

I was verrrrry writer’s-blocked this week, in part because I had less time than usual to finish my song because I was leaving on a trip to New York on Friday and wanted to finish it before that. I worked on 2-3 other song ideas but none of them were really coming together.

While scrolling back through my folder of song ideas, I stumbled across the first stanza of these lyrics, which I had written several months previous. I’d tucked this idea away, thinking it would be a good failsafe someday if I was ever feeling uninspired – which was exactly what ended up happening. I built from that initial starting point and it was much easier than trying to come up with something wholly new.

It was actually really cathartic to write this song and I feel good about how it came out. It was a useful reminder that sometimes songwriting is more craft than art, in the sense that having a structured songwriting process can help you crank one out even if you feel you have nothing new to say.

---

Song 39/52: “Existentialist”

Lyrics:

Do you feel the dread
Seeping through the cracks?
Do you read the news?
Do you know the facts?

They say the world is ending soon
Do you know what you will do
When the smoke fills the sky
And we have to wonder why?

Chorus:
What’s the point? What is this?
Quick, we need an existentialist
Where’s the joy? Where’s the bliss?
Please, we need an existentialist
To get us through this

I read a lot in school
On nihilistic angst
When other kids were cursing fate
I was giving thanks

But I still don’t know just what to do
When the world is ending soon
Do we hide and count the days?
Or do we stride into the blaze?

(repeat chorus)

Jean-Paul Sartre, Kierkegaard
Back then, you were avant-garde
Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche
Now we’d really love to meet ya
Heidegger and de Beauvoir
How I wonder where you are
Lewis Gordon, Al Camus
There’s so much we can learn from you

(repeat chorus)

 

Songwriting diary:

I was feeling uninspired so I returned to my old friend, the random word generator. One of the supplied words was “philosophy,” a subject I studied pretty extensively in high school and university, so I started wracking my brain for philosophical ideas I wanted to explore in a song. Existentialism has always been my favorite area of philosophy, and I’ve found the existentialist paradigm particularly useful and comforting as our world has descended further and further into fascism, chaos and the climate crisis over the past several years.

I started improvising vocals over chords and sang the lines, “It’s at times such as this/ that I think of the existentialists/ and how they taught us to/ see the power in everything we do.” Eventually I figured out a chord progression that felt suitable and built that initial lyrical idea into something more finessed.

The song was originally much more slow and sad-sounding, but once I’d written it, I felt it made more sense to speed it up and give it more of an unnerved, almost angry feeling. From start to finish, the whole song took about half an hour to write.

---

Song 40/52: “Tinder”

Lyrics:

Why is every girl on Tinder beautiful?
How do they do eyeliner so flawlessly?
How come all their open hearts are bruised and full?
Profiles packed with doubting and apologies

Chorus:
The world’s not fair
You can see it in this app – it’s all right there
All the pain and all the people who don’t care
If they make you smile or make you come or cry
All I do is swipe and wonder why

Why is every guy on Tinder at the gym?
Or fishing up a trout down at the dock?
Guess I’d rather that than to see more of him
Please don’t send me pictures of your… oh, fuck

(repeat chorus)

Don’t say “hey u up?”
Never just say “sup”
It’s impersonal, so why don’t
You just read my fucking bio?
Don’t destroy the mood before we’ve built it up

(repeat chorus)

 

Songwriting diary:

I had written the first and second verses of these lyrics several months ago, and found them while I was desperately trawling my music notes folder for something I could salvage into a song. I started singing those lyrics on top of a basic chord progression and then, as sometimes happens, started hearing the next section (the chorus) in my head, as if I was listening to a song rather than writing one. Then I had to write lyrics to fit into the melody and rhythm I was hearing. The bridge was written in the same way.

One of the songwriting books I read this year said that if something was invented within the past ten years, you shouldn’t mention it in a song, because there’s a strong chance it’ll make the song sound dated after not too long. Tinder has been around for just over ten years so I think I’m good 😅 To be honest, I’ve barely used it since I started dating my now-spouse in late 2017, but whenever I check back in on what’s going on over there, I notice similar patterns to how things were when I was a much more frequent Tinder user.

The hardest part of writing this song was figuring out what to say after “Please don’t send me pictures of your…” Some other options I considered were “pet rock,” “Starbucks,” “mohawk,” “dirty sock,” and “Glock.”