Chain Smoker…I Just Got It!

Several years ago, I decided to really commit to understanding the “craft” of songwriting from a more academic point of view. What this involved was me cracking open a songwriting book (and my mindedness) and see how one is actually constructed from the expertise and exercises of a hit songwriter.Um. Duh.

One such book is called Popular Lyric Writing: 10 Steps to Effective Storytelling by Andrea Stolpe, who wrote songs recorded by such artists as Faith Hill, Julianne Hough, Daniel Lee Martin, Jimmy Wayne, and others.

So, as I floundered through chapter after chapter, I soon discovered a muscle or three beginning to form. One, in particular, was called, knowledge.

Chain Smoker was simply an exercise in “destination writing” – where you create a who, what, where, when and why jumping off point to your story, then integrate internal and external rhyming pairs (words that describe how you feel vs. those that show or describe what something looks like or what’s happening).

I never really had much of a purpose to the song, other than mocking a chain smoker. I wrote it about a person who is rushing to get to the airport (namely LAX), and continues to hit figurative roadblocks all along the way. In this momentary and harried dash, this person is suddenly stopped and forced to stand in line (the security line). It’s that hurry-up-and-wait phenomenon of travel, basically.

Then, as she/he is now in the plane, she/he realizes a panic coming on because they somehow hadn’t counted on being stuck in a metal tube 3000 feet up in the air, unable to take a drag. Their frenetic mind-scramble is suddenly interrupted by a BANG! BANG! of an engine going out.

Then peace. Acceptance. And an unapologetic drag before they plunge into the sea.

Kinda of dark, right? 

In actuality, and mind you, I JUST got this, this song is an anti-smoking cautionary tale. Simply, smoking often leads to death…like a plane crash…also known as, the metaphor.

Sit down Keith, you’re a totally bizarre exception.

Again, this exercise was mainly meant to get the creative juices squeezed, de-seeded and poured out onto a page. I guess, armed with songwriting tools, it’s possible to create something more.

Damn. I had no idea that’s what this song was about.