“Did you ever plan to finish them?”
“No.”
“Then they’re not really songs, are they?” Angeline looked up at me over her shoulder. “I mean, what is a song if no one ever hears it?”
“You’re sexy when you’re wise.”
“Thank you.”
I blew out a breath. “I just don’t know if I can write those songs, finish them. Play them for people. It feels too big. And too small. And too… everything, all at once.”
“That’s why you have to play them for people.”
Maybe. Maybe not.
“I mean, if you prefer,” she said, “you could just write ‘Up in Smoke, Part Two.’”
“ItwasBreakneck’s biggest song,” I mused. “It basically paid for these houses…”
“Uh-huh.”
“Can I tell you a secret?”
“Baby, tell me all your secrets.”
“I hate that song,” I whispered in her ear.
“I know.”
“What? How did you know?”
“I can just tell. If you were proud of it, you’d lean into it more. You never talk about how much it sucks to lose Breakneck, meaning the guys and the songs. You seemed to regret losing the path you guys were on. The momentum. The plan. But not the actual music. And for a music lover, that speaks volumes.”
“You’re being wise again. It’s turning me on.”
“Good. If I were to give you one piece of advice—”
“One?” I teased.
“One for today, okay? You need to write the songs that are actually meaningful for you. They’ll have the best chance of being your biggest successesandthey’re the ones you’ll love the most. And if you’re playing them hundreds of times at concerts over the course of your career… you better love them, baby. Or you’re gonna end up very bitter and unhappy.”
“And you know this because…?”
“I have a sister who’s in a band.”
“Right.”
“Also… I can imagine it makes you feel naked and exposed,” she said gently, “the idea of singing about those personal, painful things. But you can get the emotion into it without spelling out every detail of the experience you went through. Songs don’t have to be literal.”
“Thanks. I never thought of that.”
She laughed. “Sassy!” She elbowed me gently. “Look… I heard that the Players’ first lead single off their new album, the one they shot the video for with Shayla dancing in it, was written by Ash. For Matt. Ash wrote a love song for the man he loves, and in the video there’s a woman dancing. How would anyone know what the song is really about unless someone tells them? They won’t. Because it’s not even that important, for the listener. When you listen, it’s aboutfeeling.”
I listened and I thought about that, but I didn’t say anything.
“Dirty’s most famous song is ‘Dirty Like Me,’ right?” she went on. “And no one even knows what it’s about. Not really. Why does the songwriter feel dirty? I don’t know. You don’t know. But we all know what it is to feel dirty, even if we’ve never had that experience. The beauty of it is that your version of feeling dirty and mine are different. It resonates on so many levels, and yet it’s deeply personal.”
“So… just write a song as good as Dirty’s biggest hit. Sure. No problem.”
