Johnny loves the blues
It’s got him shaking in his shoes
When he’s drinking beer’n’booze
How many words rhyme with ooze?
Songwriting can be a real pain in the you-know-where sometimes
When you’re banging your head to find the right lines
And you won’t settle for less
Yourself, myself
Himself, herself
Ourself, reading books from the shelf
How many words can you force a rhyme with elf?
Songwriting makes you wanna tear out your hair sometimes
When you’re going crazy to find the right lines
So you won’t wind up second best
I try to be original, I try my own ways
But there’s no way to avoid plagiarism or clichés
Just when I think I’ve got a line that can’t go wrong
I buy a new record and hear the same line in somebody else’s song
Songwriters these days stretch the bounds and get bolder
Even this song was once called Take A Load Off Your Shoulders
And Give Your Mind A Rest.
©2025 The Hesh Inc.
This one goes back to the mid-1980s, in the throes of one of my first songwriting "jags," when I was commiserating with my musical friend/partner Izzy Kieffer about the difficulty of finding words to match music. When we had our first band, REALITY SHOCK, we often sat by the piano in his living room and banged out all sorts of tunes, riffs, and ideas, and improvised lyrics about different things we were going through at the time in school, in our lives, in our families, and in our respective romantic realms. This one was set to a 6/8 slow blues that I used to bang out on my own piano at home. We jammed on it a few times but neither added it to Reality Shock's repertoire nor recorded it.
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