#storybehindthesong

[dwalton1us]

The Donna Walton Gospel Show interview with Nichelle Ep. 8

[codysummit]

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I recently finished a song based off a chorus that I’ve had in my head for probably...10 years(?). It all started when I put it on my old classical guitar a couple days ago. I had 2 concepts for how to play the minor riff at the end- so I combined them. Then I came up with these melodic ideas (warning:gratuitous use of 6ths ahead). Here I am practicing the second guitar over a recording of the first. #songwriting #layeringguitars #2guitars #classicalguitar #nylonstrings #nylonguitar #songwriting #songwriter #homestudio #homerecording #homerecordingstudio #creativity #concept #newsong #originalsong #songwritingtips #fingerpickingguitar #fingerpicking #mijguitars #baltimore #6th #guitarduo #thebmorecreatives #finishingasong #storybehindthesong #producingmusic (at Baltimore, Maryland) https://www.instagram.com/p/B_cig5AH5rC/?igshid=1v75xjczzjy3a

[petemcallen]

I Hear Your Voice: Behind The Song

I had recently moved to Cambridge, in a new flat, and like most places where I've lived each home has a special songwriting memory.  Living in a new place always feels a little odd when writing that first song, and one evening I was struggling to come up with fresh creative ideas.

After an hour or so of struggle, I felt the nudge to pick up a delay pedal and mess around with some of the feedback analogue options.  (I’m a great believer in hearing God speak through little nudges in ordinary circumstances).  I let the guitar feedback gradually with a whirling sound playing a repetitive picking pattern. 

Soon after using this sound, creativity flowed and the original lyrics were written that evening.  I brought the song to my friend Josh Campbell who suggested some drum parts and for nearly a year the song felt finished.  We played it live once as a three piece, with re-arranged lyrics again, and realised that it could work on a worship album.  The goal was to use it in a gig context originally, but it started connecting with people in church.  When I made the decision to record a devotional focused album this song had to be on it. 

My wife Lizzie struggled with insomnia for long periods during our first year of marriage, and we would often be awake in the night, praying and trying to rest.  It was tough for both of us, we became incredibly weary, and a good nights sleep seemed like a miracle.  This song has been re-written (a third time) with Lizzie’s input, to reflect this.  It’s a song for the night hours, where worries and anxieties can become distorted.  My hope is for those who suffer with sleeplessness that this song will speak to you – that in the middle of the night you will know God is speaking, whispering rays of hope to your heart.

It was only in the last two months before the album release that I realised how this titled summed up the whole project.  When we worship God, our souls become tuned in to His voice, and rather than needing to speak, we are opened up; we lean in, and with the attitude of the heart say "Speak Lord, I am listening."

[britneychristian]

The Story Behind "When It Rains It Pours"

Have you ever had a time in life where nothing seemed to be going right? Everything you thought you had going for you suddenly disappears and every opportunity seems doomed to not work out. We all have different ways of dealing with situations like that. Some of us have no problem opening up to others and sharing what is going on, and others find all sorts of different ways to put up a wall.

  I regret to say that I am a wall builder and my wall comes in the form of smiles or laughter. If someone asks if you are ok and you are able to plaster on a smile, or laugh it off with a lighthearted, “Oh yeah, I’m good”, most people are pretty convinced. But something happens if you do that for too long; you begin to feel like a fake, like everything you are portraying is false, and it is.

  I was in that season that I talked about, the one where everything seemed to be going wrong. Nothing was working out career wise, my best friend had just moved across the country and I was left feeling alone and confused. On a particularly rough day, I showed up at my acting class and one of my friends pulled me aside and asked me what was wrong. I tried my normal tactics but she didn’t buy it. I finally opened up and shared with her some of the things that I was going through and she told me that it was ok to portray something other than my happy, smiley if that wasn’t what I was feeling. She encouraged me to be ok with letting people see a different side of me.

  A few days later, I sat down at the piano and just started playing. Words started coming to my mind and melodies started to form. I let everything out, all my inner venting, and my struggles. A few hours later, I looked at the sheet in front of me filled with new lyrics and I thought to myself, “Well, that’s depressing. I’m sure no one would ever want to hear that.” But in an effort to learn how to open up to people, I sent it to my best friend, the one who was living across the country.  He loved it, but I still wasn’t convinced.

  To me, it was too depressing; it had no light, no hope. And despite the way I was feeling during that season, I have always been a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. I have always believed that no season, even our darkest ones are in vain. I also remembered that the last time I had been in a season like that, the growth and blessings I received afterwards were too many to count. I believed that it would be true this time as well.

  So I began to re-write the ending. Without discounting what I was going through, I shifted the focus from doubt, to faith, from a lack of trust, to trusting even when it’s hard to see. Then I sat back and knew that it was done. I knew that it meant something to me not just because I had learned how to let my wall down, but because I had also reminded myself of where my hope is found.

  Something beautiful happened. A full year later, I was in the studio recording this song from a whole new perspective. The hope that I held on to, that faith that blessings would follow my trails, was now right before my eyes. The best friend I talked about who had moved across the country, he was with me in the studio that day, not just as my best friend, but also as my fiancé. When I wrote this song, I was at my lowest point in my career, wondering if maybe it was over altogether. But here I was, in the nicest studio I had ever been in, with the best producer I had ever worked with, recording that same song.  

  It really is true that when it rains, it pours...

[kalicojak]

Save Me- The Story behind the song

I knew I was lucky. I knew I had it good. I knew life had little more to offer that could truly overshadow and exceed what I had with her. She was beautiful, bright and funny and she knew how to take care of me. But I woke everyday knowing I was failing her. I wanted to love her and let go and live into her. I wanted with everything I had to give everything up and be hers and only hers. But I could not. I could not see a world with her and only her. I could not see a future in which I was selfless and lived only into her and into us. The thought terrified me. This terror became my dirty secret, and like all secrets, it morphed into a cancer to infect and destroy not only myself, but my whole world. The deterioration began in common interactions. I found myself being more irritated by common occurances. Being tardy to a party become unbearable. The joke about my unkempt demeanor became kindling for furious battles. We fought about dinner plans and schedules. We screamed about money and the future. These times were hard, but nothing too noteworthy. We never physically or emotionally hurt one another. We were just a young couple learning how to be adults. We were growing together and working to build a life. What was noteworthy about every disagreement was how it seemed to be fuel to the dangerous wildfire that was in me. I came from a broken home. I lived through a hard and pain speckled childhood. Distrust was a piece of my self portrait. The fights we had were not just fights, they fed the darkness that lived in me. When we disagreed about anything, our hard words became triggers for every unfortunate piece of my troubled life. They fueled my sadness. As me and my perfect partner grew together and grew in the eyes of our friends and families, I grew darker. I awoke one day and realized that I had lost control. I felt the malignant force from my battered soul reaching toward the woman I loved and I knew what I had to do. For weeks I worked to prepare myself. I became aloof and unavailable to her. I grew cold and shied away from her embraces. When the time was right, I spoke the words that I knew would change our worlds forever, "I don't love you anymore." It was five months before we sat to speak to one another again. She had begun to heal and I had been working so hard to overcome the pains and hurts that had taken me hostage. I had struggled to truly look at myself and beat back the sadness that crept and captured my heart so long ago. I tried to find the words to tell her these things. I wanted her to understand why I had to do what I did. I needed her to know why I had hurt her. I craved to feel that she could still love me, despite the broken road our life had become. She captured my eyes with hers and said, "I don't love you anymore." By: Kelli Coleman, 2014

[manesworldblog]

#storybehindthesong

Pink Floyd keyboard player Rick Wright wrote this song, which is about life, gradually descending into death. Hence the angrier and more intense first half with a dying person refusing to "go gently into that good night." The second half is gentler, as the dying person gives into the inevitable and fades away. In the March 1998 issue of Mojo, Wright explained: "For me, one of the pressures of being in the band was this constant fear of dying because of all the traveling we were doing in planes and on the motorways in America and in Europe."

[manesworldblog]

#storybehindthesong

Ryan Fedder recently said on TheVoice he wrote this song about the money problems he and his wife had when they were first married. He worked a lot of jobs and he always told her one day they would have money to burn and would never have to worry about bills, they'd be counting stars.