{"id":24033,"date":"2021-02-15T16:49:25","date_gmt":"2021-02-15T21:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=24033"},"modified":"2021-02-15T16:49:26","modified_gmt":"2021-02-15T21:49:26","slug":"how-we-wrote-this-nick-lowe-the-dbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/how-we-wrote-this-nick-lowe-the-dbs\/","title":{"rendered":"How We Wrote This: Nick Lowe, The dB&#8217;s&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Song Exploder | Official Trailer | Netflix\" width=\"695\" height=\"391\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rjIooIOtg4I?feature=oembed&amp;wmode=opaque\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve seen a couple of stories the past week from artists talking about their songwriting process. I love reading and hearing about how artists wrote a particular song.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>First, there&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/2021\/feb\/15\/how-we-made-cruel-to-be-kind-nick-lowe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">this <em>Guardian<\/em> piece with Nick Lowe talking about the writing of &#8220;Cruel to Be Kind.&#8221;<\/a> Great little piece, but Nick may regret sharing this memory:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\"><p>Ian Gomm, from the Brinsley days, had taught me the triumphal chord at the top of the song, where I sing \u201cB-a-a-ab-y, you gotta be cruel to be kind\u201d, so he has a co-writing credit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Friend of the Hall Gomm posted this article on his Facebook page and recalled adding more to the song than that single chord.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com\/2008\/11\/18\/anatomy-of-a-flop\/\" target=\"_blank\">richer article written by the song&#8217;s author itself, <strong>Peter Holsapple<\/strong> of <strong>The dB&#8217;s<\/strong><\/a>, appeared on our Rock Town Hall Facebook page, courtesy of the excellent <em>Steve Hoffman Music Forums<\/em>. It&#8217;s actually a 2008 <em>New York Times<\/em> article about the song &#8220;Love Is for Lovers,&#8221; the single from the band&#8217;s third album, <em>Like This<\/em>. Maybe we even covered this back in 2008, but hey, &#8220;It&#8217;s COVID-19, Jake.&#8221; It&#8217;s interesting to read Holsapple&#8217;s aspirations for the song and the confluence of circumstances that he felt went into its failure to even sniff the charts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These are both good tales, but what&#8217;s your favorite songwriter tale about the writing of a song?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On a related note, I wish there was a Boomer edition of the podcast (and now Netflix series) <em>Song Exploder<\/em>. which is all about the writing of a song. My problem is that so many of the artists are youngsters way outside my tastes that I really have to focus to appreciate what these people put together. Although I&#8217;m exhausted by paying attention to some milquetoast artist like <strong>Bon Iver<\/strong> telling me about the creation of his boring song, I usually do appreciate the process. To give you an idea of how much I hunger for a version of this podcast with artists whose music I dig, the Netflix series episode with REM and &#8220;Losing My Religion&#8221; was a relative godsend for me. Some of you may know how I feel about REM and that song.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve seen a couple of stories the past week from artists talking about their songwriting process. I love reading and hearing about how artists wrote a particular song. First, there&#8217;s this Guardian piece with Nick Lowe talking about the writing of &#8220;Cruel to Be Kind.&#8221; Great little piece, but Nick may regret sharing this memory: <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/how-we-wrote-this-nick-lowe-the-dbs\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24033"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}