You Can Write A Song About Anything

On Ordinary Inspirations, Gardens & Conversations

Songs come about in the most ordinary of ways sometimes.

Back in 2008, I wanted to test my songwriting chops and decided to try to write a song about some everyday kind of thing, that sounded like it was maybe about something more important. I’d had a kind of Arabic sounding insistent guitar riff needling away at me that I used as the backdrop. I had been thinking about it while I was out weeding and planting, surrounded by gardening books and seed packets and then I had to Google some information about why some of the plants weren’t doing too well. I read about the wonderfully named ‘mosaic virus’ which was almost certainly what the zucchinis were suffering from and about how it was important to strive to mimic nature with your watering and planting techniques.

Next thing I knew, I had this song. I didn’t really know what it meant then and still don’t really, except that I think I was trying to say that as much we like to think we are in control, we have to understand that we are all subservient to nature.

If you wanna run for your life
You gotta have two legs and a wife
If you want your garden to grow
You gotta mimic the rain

Courtney Barnett wrote a far superior song that takes in the gardening experience but adds the real life drama of an almost fatal asthma attack followed by a heart warming casual conversation between her and the ambulance driver that somehow takes in the whole human experience. Thats it’s all delivered so nonchalantly somehow heightens the impact of the song. I think its a masterpiece and the world thought so too.

Drawing from this muddy well we also got Phoebe Bridgers ‘Garden Song’, Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Secret Garden’ and Haley Heynderickx’s album ‘I Need To Start A Garden’. Many more here on this handy garden themed Spotify playlist I made for y’all.

I started working half heartedly on another song about gardening, or more specifically about hard dirt and my lack of success with it when I lived in Los Angeles, called ‘The Tallest Rose in LA’. Here is the actual rose, way taller than me, and the only thing I ever grew there.

Hopefully this might spur me to finish it. I might add a dramatic near death experience and a conversation to see if that helps it grow some good song legs. I do actually have a somewhat bizarre conversation I overheard from the house behind mine in that garden noted down somewhere, maybe thats my missing ingredient… I’ll keep you posted!

I discovered the other day that the Dire Straits super hit ‘Money For Nothing’ was inspired when Mark Knopfler was wandering around an appliance store in 1985 and overheard a couple of peeved store clerks complaining about how easy rock stars had it compared to their endless tasks. True that, rock star Knopfler literally copied down their conversation on a borrowed piece of paper with a pencil and rocketed it straight to number 1! I wonder how many appliance store clerks read that song fact and have racked their brains to see if it could’ve been their conversation that sparked it. Here’s the Knopfler songwriting interview if you’d like to read it.

We got to install microwave ovens

Custom kitchen deliveries

We got to move these refrigerators

We got to move these color TVs

Sometimes all you have to do is open your ears or your eyes or get a little dirt on your hands and hey presto, a song lands on your shoulder.

Its quite a world out there x

PS if you’re in Sydney Australia this week, on Monday 5th Dec (tomorrow night) I’m talking all things “Lovers Dreamers Fighters’ at Butchers Brew in Dulwich Hill, along with cultural historian Peter Doyle and my dad Peter Head, who is in discussion with Mark Cornwall, the author of his work-in-progress biography. Tix are free but you need to book a spot here.

Also I’m honoured to be the intermission palate cleanser for the magnificent Kim Salmon & The Surrealists, sandwiched between their two stellar band formations at the Great Club as they perform their albums in full. I’ll be joined by Sam Worrad on guitar. Tix here, also selling fast.

PPS Please leave any gardening song suggestions or just general gardening tips in the comments. Thank you.