monday song #76: fingernails

lyrics

despite the peppy keyboard, this one is one of the bleaker monday songs. and that’s saying something! essentially a song about depression, though with the customary romanticism removed, and the mundanity cranked up.

i get tired of reading memoirs where the author paints themselves as a super-hero withstanding the deep torments that a normal human could never endure. this tends to be the lion’s share of mental health memoirs. i’m planning to write a more realistic, less self-aggrandizing memoir in parallel with my next album, “up, up, and away,” charting the course of a manic episode. i’m looking forward to beginning the work later this year.

i had an idea for a video where a depressed guy taped himself writing a song, in search of one great tune, with the idea that when that tune was posted, he’d kill himself. so when the tune was posted, his fans would know: the video would play and the movie would end.

i don’t think this one would qualify as the great tune he was searching for, he was on a quest for a “hey jude” (starts at 1:10) or a “hey joe” or even a “hey bulldog.” ‘fingernails” is hardly more than a sketch, stealing the piano figure from ‘charlie patience’ and the vocal harmony bridges i keep doing. essentially a cheat to ornament a rather plain melody. still, i think it works: the requisite self-pity offset by a jaunty self-effacing tone.

until next week…