“Singer-songwriter” is used to define popular music artists who write and perform their own material, which is often self-accompanied generally on acoustic guitar or piano. Such an artist performs the roles of composer, lyricist, vocalist, sometimes instrumentalist, and often self-manager. According to AllMusic, singer-songwriters’ lyrics are often personal but veiled by elaborate metaphors and vague imagery, and their creative concern is to place emphasis on the song rather than their performance of it. Most records by such artists have a similarly straightforward and spare sound that placed emphasis on the song itself.
The term has also been used to describe songwriters in the rock, folk, country, and pop music genres including Henry Russell, Aristide Bruant, Hank Williams, and Buddy Holly. It came into popular usage in the 1960s onwards to describe songwriters who followed particular stylistic and thematic conventions, particularly lyrical introspection, confessional songwriting, mild musical arrangements, and an understated performing style. According to writer Larry David Smith, because it merged the roles of composer, writer, and singer, the popularity of the singer-songwriter reintroduced the Medieval troubadour tradition of “songs with public personalities” after the Tin Pan Alley era in American popular music.
by Dana Perry
“Play Your Song” is a song I had written about my experiences with Girls/Ladies Rock Camp… or so I thought… It’s rare when I write about something other than my own self-evolution. Funny thing tho: even when you think you’re talking to someone else, you’re truly just talking to yourself. Everyone and everything in your “reality” is a fucking carnival fun-house mirror.
More than a name, an action. It states my identity and intent.
So let me re-introduce myself. I am Swingin Hammers.
It was a frigid December and I was sitting in a tree thinking I was unreachable, this was incorrect. Very incorrect.
In eighth grade, I was challenged by my English teacher, Mrs. Walters, to write something that exercised our class’s objective at the time, imagery. I was very naive but full of heart back then and wrote this cheesy piece describing the practice room of me and my friends’ first band, Tigerlake. It has a certain charm to it I think, but only the kind of charm you find in old terrible family photos.
It reminds me of how sure I used to be of me and my friends becoming something, doing something with our music. So yes it is cheesy, and it doesn’t really talk about anything I’ve been working on recently, but it talks about where I’ve come from, and sometimes that’s even more important.
by Fair Heart
What parts of yourself do you hide away? Out of guilt, fear, uncertainty, or anything else, there are always tiny dreams and memories we hide from others. Yet, these secrets show us who we are if we dare bring them to light. Through music I created and discovered things hidden in me. I’ve been working on finding the courage to accept those things and make them real again. This has inspired my songwriting work so far.
There was a piece of me so lost… I ran around the world creating chaos… crashing and burning and needing to be rescued again and again trying to find it.
by Girl Gang
Pretty early on in life, we both figured out that it was okay to challenge the rules. It seemed that people loved to tell us HOW the world worked, but nobody knew WHY it worked the way it did. Why did we have to wear dresses and have pink things?
It was when the leaves changed color. It was when the sea of green became overwhelmed with raucous reds, glittering golds, and burnt browns. That was the first time he saw her.
I was taught that to be a true musician, one has to make a choice between a social life and success. This is a concept that I have struggled with for the past two years before writing Sunset Club. I first became introduced to the idea of being a performer with classical music, mainly opera. To be a successful classical musician, one must spend all their free time practicing, learning, thinking, and breathing music. That isn’t the life for everyone.
