smudie: November 2008 Archives

I suppose it's obvious, but I'll say it anyway: every lyric I write is personal.

Now, that doesn't mean that all of my songs that tell stories are necessarily telling stories about me. It just means that they are personal in the sense that they express how I feel at this moment in time, how I have felt at some point the past, or even how I might feel in some imaginary situation I have not (yet) experienced.

Personal is not a synonym of autobiographical.

This is an important distinction to make when writing words for other people to sing. The people I write for need to feel that our songs belong to them as much as they belong to me.

To put it another way, I sometimes feel more like a film director, creating a scene in which others can act. In this sense, I guess you could say that Never and Leave Me With Your Scent are two of my latest little movies.

• Never
• Leave Me With Your Scent