So I write poetry. I'm cool like that I guess. I've been writing stories since I can remember which seems normal because of school with English class and all but I've always had a weird love for it. I'm always teaching myself new ways to write and I can't get enough of reading other artists' poetry and getting inspired.
When I entered high school I started doing the best work I had ever done. Poetry became a daily occurrence (I assume this was due to my lack of confidence and so much life to talk about) and poetry was my release. Poetry was my way of showing the world that I have a story to tell.
But in the past year I just haven't been motivated and this has irked me like a wedgie.
In July last year my friend was asked to write a song for his friend's wedding. Now this friend of mine, lets call him Darren, was already a self-proclaimed singer/songwriter. Darren can play the guitar. Darren can sing songs. Darren can indeed write a song as it turned out, though Darren was not very good at communication through lyrics in general. So while a few months earlier I'd made the mistake of telling Darren that I write poetry and where he can find it on the Internet (which for those of you who are interested is here) he had read and loved my poetry and asked me to help him write the song for the wedding.
I have to be honest when I say: I laughed in his face, but only briefly before announcing "you realise that my poetry is about death and mostly sadness and taboo topics like teen pregnancy, right?" and when he said "yes" I felt almost immobile and couldn't help but think to myself 'why the heck would anyone want a wedding song that makes them want to cut themselves?' when it occurred to me that it wasn't the content that he claimed to love but the creativity that he'd found within it, which was exactly what my other readers and two contactable "fans" had told me. I was suddenly... excited?
Now I'd written exactly two songs in my life-time of poetry when I was trying to "branch out" I guess, and I gotta say they were BAD! One of them was about love and me writing that was obviously a joke to human kind at that point and the other was a failed attempt at rap? Needless to say I didn't have a great start to my song writing career.
Back to the wedding song, as Darren and I met up and started talking about what the song would contain "things about love, obviously" he played a few chords and sang a few words of what he thought could be the wedding song. While I tried to contain my laughter at his "renaissance of beauty washing over him" or whatever I tried to be supportive and come up with some new ideas.
MONTHS down the line it was two weeks before the wedding and we'd still only written a verse and chorus, this wasn't looking great. We hadn't had time to get together to continue writing and on the times that we did we ended up just chatting and catching up. This was bad. Panic mode set in, I went home and listed to some great love songs and popular wedding songs to try to get inspiration but in true nature to myself I found the most inspiration in a song about a girl who didn't feel like she met the standards of her ex-boyfriend because his new girlfriend seemed so perfect. Awesome Ashley, keep up the good work.
So I started writing a song of my own. All the 'elizabethan love' and 'skies washing down on me' could absolutely not, in any possible way, be fixed. So I turned the page and wrote my own. From the first to last word, every last one of them was my own, from my own head, in my own style, in my own poetic... let's pretend 'brilliance'. I HAD DONE IT! I had come out of my rut, I had written a song and it was actually very, very good. I was proud. So proud in fact that I uploaded it instantly to my deviantArt page.
I took it to Darren a few days later, told him I wrote a song and he decided to put a tune to it even though I already had a very country-pop sort of vibe tune to the song. I didn't like his tune, it wasn't what I wanted. However, knowing that the original song we had started to write was so completely over and terrible, I said he could sing my song at the wedding.
Moving down the track, the wedding went well and earlier this year Darren secured an opening gig for an internationally known Australian-born comedian, which was big news. He invited me as his VIP and I went there to support my friend. Darren didn't show me his set list until the night of and he had decided to play MY SONG! I was gob-smacked, I didn't know what to say, we were friends I couldn't tell him last minute not to sing it, it would ruin the set. During the gig he acknowledged me by saying "I wrote this with my friend Ashley... blah blah". Shock face. Did he just say HE WROTE THIS SONG?
OH NO HE DI'INT!
What the H-E-Double-hockey-sticks is going on here? I wrote that song. Entirely. Alone. At my computer. I have three different versions and a deviantArt page to prove it! I know in the depths of my soul that I, Ashley, wrote that song with not an ounce of help from him. Maybe he inspired me to get me started, but the inspiration doesn't get the credit for the song. Maybe some thanks from the artist but not the credit. Who's giving all of the credit to Adele's ex-boyfriend for all of her "21" Album. NO ONE except Adele. You know why? Because he didn't write it!
I guess what I'm asking is: Is it wrong for Darren to take credit or play the song without my permission? Or is it okay because he wrote his version of the music and thought it was his too?
Sorry for the long post, I just really needed to fit in the details. For those interested you can read the song here.
Ashley xx
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