The Song, Not The Singer?

"King For A Day" written by Westmeath writer, Bobby Hewitt is the 1999 Bacardi Unplugged Song Of The Year. Bobby's entry was chosen from an original entry of over 500 songs submitted by songwriters from all over Ireland. He receives £1,000 cash from Bacardi, three days recording time in Verge Studios, 500 CDs from Trend Studios, an exclusive interview in Hot Press, a professionally written press release and biography plus PR support on release of the single.

For the first time ever the public were able to vote for their choice through the good offices of Today FM. Over two weeks the final eight songs were played in Pet Sounds presented by Tom Dunne and listeners could use a telephone system to vote for their favourite. The public vote was combined with a panel including Sony Records A&R man, Hugh Murray, 2FM's Head of Music, Liam Thompson, Today FM's Irish Music show presenter, Paul Power and Hot Presser Barry Glendenning.

The other seven finalists were:
"He Said, I Said" by Barry Grace from Dublin / Siobhan O'Brien from Limerick,
"Belfast Central" by Juliet Turner from Belfast,
"Neven Street" by Marc Roche and The Blew from Dublin,
"Happy" by Blowtooth from Dublin,
"Questions" by Stand from Dublin,
"Moon Over Chanceaux" by Gerry Morgan from Belfast
and "Dream" by Jennifer Lomasney from Cork.

Meanwhile the grand final of the Bacardi Unplugged Band of the Year competition takes place on Friday 14th May in Dublin's newest music venue, HQ. The grand finalists are The Blew from Dublin, Purple Ocean from Kilkenny, Ben Reel from Armagh, The Keds from Drogheda, The Inflatable Sideshow from Galway and Blowtooth from Dublin. The outright winner will receive a prize package worth £15,000.

So the song section of Bacardi Unplugged is over for another year and you haven't won the lucrative £5,000 prize package on offer. Boo-hoo. But now you may be even more intrigued by the whole songwriting deal and are wondering what really goes on during the mysterious creative compositional process.

In the '60s Mick Jagger sang, in a Rolling Stones song of that name, "It's the singer, not the song." Well, there's a veritable army of songwriters and composers who would take issue with Mick on that. Without songs there would be no singers, no music industry and very little fun. What else would football crowds do during a dull match?

Songs fuel the artist and exhilarate the public, and truly great songs can be sung by virtually any singer. "Yesterday" by The Beatles has been recorded by nearly three thousand different artists, from Tammy Wynette to Wet Wet Wet, Ray Charles to Marianne Faithfull. It's been performed in a variety of musical styles and formats, including classical, Irish traditional and jazz instrumental versions. Your mad Uncle Ernie probably tried to sing it last time he was drunk, proof that a good song can survive the most sadistic treatment.

But the process of writing a song is, especially for those who've never tried it, imbued with unfathomable mystique. Some people even assume that songs arrive in the composer's head fully formed and ready to roll, a concept about which Bono has given some thought. According to the U2 headman, "Sometimes it feels like the songs are already written. But our songs are too human for me to be so arrogant as to claim that they were written in the air."

Not that it always has to take forever. T-Bone Burnett has claimed to have personally witnessed Elvis Costello knocking off complete songs in a matter of minutes; lyrics, melody, title, hook-lines, the whole works. Bob Dylan even claimed to have written "Blowin' In The Wind", subsequently a universal anthem for the protest movement of the sixties, in about ten minutes.

Noël Coward admitted he composed the hit song "I'll See You Again" in twenty minutes while waiting for a taxi, proof that you don't have to lock yourself away in a garret, alone, unwatered and unfed, while you engage in rapturous congress with your muse. A taxi was also the scene of the composition of The Beach Boys' classic "Fun, Fun, Fun" which Mike Love and Brian Wilson put together while en route to the airport.

But it's not always that quick either, and it's never easy. Few casual music fans ever consider the hours, or even months, spent agonising over the two lines of lyrics that won't come or the part of the melody that doesn't quite work. James Taylor wrote his hit "Fire And Rain" in three different places on both sides of the Atlantic over a period of several months. He composed the first verse in a basement flat in London, the second was worked on in a hospital ward in Manhattan and the third in another hospital, in Massachusetts. In reality, the song had been on tour before it had even been finished!

Perhaps Tom Waits came nearest to describing the process when he said that writing songs was like "trying to carry water in your hands". But songwriters are notoriously bad judges of songs, especially their own. When Bruce Springsteen wrote "Born In The USA" he wasn't even sure if it was good enough to put on his next album and wrote to his manager telling him so. Bruce probably wouldn't have bothered to enter the song for Bacardi Unplugged, but he may have changed his mind about its quality now.

Some folks are understandably fascinated by what might have been the original spark for a particular song, and there are some truly noteworthy examples of the serendipitous way in which songs emerge into the spotlight of their creator's consciousness. Van Morrison has a song called "Almost Independence Day" on his Saint Dominic's Preview album. That song was initially sparked by a phone-call Van received from Oregon from a member of Them. That call prompted the line "I can hear Them calling, 'way from Oregon". The rest of the lyrics followed from that rather nebulous beginning.

Similarly, Paul Simon was inspired to write his classic "Mother And Child Reunion" when he was served a dish of chicken and egg in a Chinese Restaurant and pondered the possibility that the egg might have been hatched by the chicken. Mark Knopfler wrote "Money For Nothing" in a hi-fi shop after observing two employees having the conversation on which he based the lyrics.

But if you think there's a short and snappy bunch of rules or a 12-step programme you can follow, think again. The only rule is, there are no rules. As any judge of the Bacardi Unplugged contest will tell you, one of the most common mistakes made by the novice songwriter is the assumption that every two lines must rhyme and be of equal length. The equal length theory should be forever banished after hearing a handful of Bob Dylan songs, and the song "Moonlight In Vermont", recorded by Frank Sinatra, does not contain a single rhyme.

Then again, a catchy chorus is often regarded as a must for any song to have a chance, especially in relation to its commercial potential, but "Up The Junction", a hit for Squeeze, has no chorus at all to speak of, just an end-of-verse repetition of the title phrase.

Nor is it always the lyrics that serve as the starting point. It could equally be a guitar riff, a rhythm pattern, a chord sequence or a snatch of melody, and if it works, it hardly matters. Bob Dylan has a theory that every song is already written, and that it just needs somebody to use as a vehicle to come through, and referred to Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey" as an example. Interesting thought, that, although not quite so easy to prove.

But if you're really struggling to get your songwriting career out of the starting blocks, and you've tried every which way, maybe you should take a leaf out of the life of the legendary Cole Porter. He had his first song (it was called "The Bobolink Waltz") published when he was about eleven after his mother slipped the publisher a bribe of £100! You should take note, though, that the Bacardi panel might not be convinced so easily, or so cheaply.