It's In The Title!

“Every little piece of your life, will add up to one. Every little piece of your life, will mean something, to someone”. I doubt anybody cares about the origins of my blog name, but there it is anyway! Track number three, ‘The Weight of The World’ on the album ‘An End Has A Start’ by the Birmingham-based band ‘Editors’. Now, I confess, well known to many of my friends, I’m obsessed with song lyrics. I love a clever rhyme, a meaningful verse, an amusing line. The lyric above is an example of one of those. Why? Because I like to think it’s extremely true! I like to think there is somebody who cares about the choices you make, the things you do. I like to think that whilst I ramble on about seemingly pointless things on here – somebody, somewhere, will take notice.

Have you ever thought that “In one single moment your whole life can turn ‘round”? Well, Mike Skinner of the Streets clearly has, and whilst this was related to the sad ending to what I’m sure was quite the relationship with a very special woman, doesn’t this just refer to a lot of events? A shooting (in America, unfortunately, where else?); that response from a job interview; learning you are to become a parent, an uncle or aunt, a grandmother or father!?

Here’s a popular one, used by just about everybody when they hit twenty years of age – “You’re not nineteen forever, pull yourself together”. Evidently true, and obvious, but the message here isn’t just ‘oh, look, you’re twenty, happy birthday!’ – It’s realisation that in many cases, as your parents and grandparents will tell you, youth is wasted on the young. You won’t ever get that time back, a time to do what you want with your life, a time when you can cope with staying in a tent at a festival, a time when you can hit a bar or club without anybody raising eyebrows because you’re ‘too old’, and most importantly, a time before many of us have any dependencies to consider (by this, I specifically mean kids). For those of you living in isolation for the last six years, that’s a reference to the Courteeners.

In very different ways, Eminem and Frank Turner are two of my favourite lyricists of the 21^st century. Only Eminem could make ‘he hopes and he wished it’ rhyme without fail with ‘he pretends that’. For whatever your opinion of Eminem, and an excessive use of swearing in his lyrics – the likes of ‘Cleaning out my Closet’ and ‘Sing for the Moment’ remain, in my opinion, some of the cleverest rap songs lyrically in my time.
With Frank Turner, is there a mood he doesn’t cover? Every single song contains lines and lines of life lessons. Politically, socially and mentally – Frank offers his vision on it all in a way anybody can relate to. Don’t agree? Well, “Sometimes that’s just life”.

Maybe world leaders could benefit from listening to the politically-motivated King Blues, because, after all, “Going to war, to prevent war, is the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard”.

Elsewhere in the world of music, lyrical genius Usher has let us know how somebody makes him go ‘Oh, Oh, Oh Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh Oh’ (repetitively); The disappearing act once known as ‘Scouting for Girls’ explained how a certain female was not only ‘so love-er-lee’, she was also ‘so love-er-lay’!; ‘El Chombo’, or ‘Chacarron’ (nobody is too sure), took it one step further by announcing to the world “Ualuealuealeuale ualuealuealeuale”… whatever that means. I guess The Enemy were right – “All of this, our hearts, our nation; a total lack of civilization”.