Fix Your Heart Or Die

On The Anatomy of a Song

I’ve been loving hearing demos and reading about other people’s various behind the scenes processes here on Substack so I thought I’d share a sneak peek into mine.

While looking for some lunch while on tour in Brisbane recently, I stopped in at a grungy old school cafe that looked like it did time at night as a dive bar. It had the air of a rock’n’roll institution, and I always love those places. Plus their personal size pizzas had burrata and fresh basil and looked really good.

There was not a space left in the bathroom stalls not filled with scrawled graffiti. Most of it terrible, as bathroom graffiti generally is. I, however, have a habit (good or bad I’m not sure) of reading everything that lands in front of me; cereal packets, real estate flyers, trashy magazine covers at the supermarket - and in amidst all the pointless twaddle, the words FIX YOUR HEART OR DIE leapt out at me and my first thought was, oh, that’s a song!

I have that thought reasonably often, and songs don’t always emerge, but sometimes you just know a phrase is going to be important to your life. Sometimes a phrase just burrows into your mind and announces itself over and over and over like a digital alarm clock you can’t turn off until you wrestle those words into a semblance of a song and once you’ve passed the starting line and its just a matter of time and effort til it’s done, the phrase might give you a break here and there to cleanse the palette and come back fresh, but its always lurking in the recesses of your mind demanding your attention like a sulky toddler. Songs really are the boss, and we the songwriters, are their servants. That’s how it works for me anyway. Obviously I must love being bossed around.

I went straight back to my room at the Hotel Diana and scrawled the words on the hotel notepaper, then ran off to soundcheck. Then it was a gig time, then dream time, then I was at the airport at 6am with the tune still relentlessly pounding in my head. Louder and louder. It was starting to hurt. Once I was on the plane and had a minute, I couldn’t keep it in my head anymore. I slipped into the airplane bathroom and recorded/yelled this quick demo on my trusty telephone you can hardly hear over the whirring of the engines.

I messed around with a few more lyrics mentally while on tour in Adelaide but didn’t have much time there either. Just before I went to sleep I added to what I’d already written on the Hotel Diana notepaper and felt like the song was getting close…

I arrived in Perth way too early the next morning and went to Abbe May’s place to sleep on her comfy couch. She headed off to play her show and I borrowed one of her many cool guitars from the wall and sat down and recorded this demo. My fingers knew exactly what chords to play. After I recorded it, and noted down the chords because I always forget them and get confused later, I lay down and slept the sleep of the dead for half an hour. I find that happens quite often after I write a song, I couldn’t tell you why except maybe it takes more mental energy than I realise.

I also couldn’t tell you exactly what the song is about, but I’ve learnt not to examine that too deeply. The song knows, and the listeners of the song will know and that’s what matters. I’ll probably work it out in about twenty years. It could be advice to myself or to someone else. It could be a general commandment to the world. It could be a story song from someone else’s perspective. What I know is that I have a strong skeleton of a good song that I know means something that matters cos I feel it in my heart, and I can take it into the studio with my gorgeous band (Sam, Cec & Ken) and they will flesh it out into something meaty and pulsating and tangible and make it hurt so good in all the best ways. I can shut my eyes and hear it in a crowded club and see faces in front of me singing along with the chorus. My work here is almost done.

When the song is fully cooked and in place on my getting-very-close-to-nearly-ready new album, I’ll let you know. Maybe it’ll resonate and you’ll sing the words back to me one night in a crowded (or empty) club somewhere… or they’ll keep you company on a walk or as you fly from one city to another or catch the bus home from work. The fact that songs belong to everyone and no-one and can go places I can only imagine is one of the things I love most about writing them. What are they for? We don’t really know, but we do know that when we’re sad, or lonely or contemplative or stirred up or relaxing or socialising, we turn to songs to accompany us on our journeys.

We have a collective need for songs.

And I’m grateful for my internal need to write them.

Fix your heart, or die, and thanks for reading!

*If you like reading about how songs are made try these great Substacks for size:

Kevin Morby

Jeff Tweedy | Starship Casual

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Colin Meloy

*I keep every Loose Connections post free for all subscribers because I’m just thrilled to be finding readers all around the world and I love to read as much as I love to write, and when I’ve been broke and hit a paywall just as it gets to the good bit, it makes me want to cry! This is why my posts will always be free for two weeks and then they may disappear behind a paywall after that. However I do believe that writers deserve to be paid for their work, so if you have the means and the inclination, I sincerely and deeply appreciate paid subscriptions because it helps me work towards creating a sustainable career as a writer. If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing!