The Second!

This post is entitled "The Second" in reference to the second song I've written this year!
(This is of course, discounting the ones I have to write for my certificate, which I've contributed to two so far. They were pretty cool really but I would have liked them more if there'd been less use of the word "baby" in the lyrics. I dislike that word - it seems to be one the most cliched and misused word in all music!)
Anyway, I'm pretty stoked with this song! 

The story behind it is it came out of a bit of a hard songwriting period for me. We got given "song topics" for the current genre we're studying (Kiwi Music). And although some of the themes were pretty good to write about, like anger or dancing, it didn't seem to be working for me. Every lyric I was churning out was pretty uninspiring, and the tunes were even worse. But I felt like I really had to get something out. Eventually I just got frustrated with it as well as a bunch of other things. I felt disenchanted with the knowledge how small the New Zealand music industry is, how hard it is to succeed, and frustrated with my inability to find another band to join. So I was thinking about inspiration and stuff, and scrawled some lyrics down just before tea, and finished off the rest of the verses and the structure at 1.01 am in the morning.
Classes finished early today, and I wasn't doing anything productive hanging around UCOL, so I walked back to the hostel in the pouring rain after having a few mishaps trying to buy an umbrella. I was pretty bored so I just picked up my acoustic and started jamming round with a few chord bases. I got something which sounded really cool, and was thinking "I need to write down some lyrics for this". But when I reached to grab some paper, this song was just sitting there, and I ended up giving that a try. It was kind of strange to begin with, because when I wrote it, I never imagined it sounding like that. It was totally different, but in a awesome way. And though it feels like a couple of songs mashed together, it somehow works. 

Anyway, enough rambling. Here's the lyrics:

BREATHE 

I pause, when held back from nothing

I pause cause I'm trapped in this motionless bay

I reach to grasp these illusions 

I reach, only to have these dreams swept away

Give me a breath of fresh air

Cause I need some oxygen

All I need is a breath of fresh air

To put the wind in my sails

Then I'll leave this bland cove

And blaze a new trail

It moves faster than a heartbeat

It moves slower than a stationary car

It speaks and it's words sound like silver

It speaks and people feel like they could touch the stars

I'm dying; without it 

Why is it so hard to breathe?

And I won't look back 

No I won't look back

I'm leaving now

And I won't turn back

(c) copyright Jordan Gowan 2012

To me it speaks volumes...