The Cow Ate My Homework

9. I Start to Turn the Tables (Or Do I?)

As the crappy day goes on, this sort of internal pep talk starts repeating itself to me. I imagine a dorky little cartoon guy inside my brain saying, "It has to go up from here." Do I believe him? Not really. But I also don't kick him out of my brain. Statistically speaking, it makes sense that things couldn't keep going so poorly for me.

Sarah and I have a study hall period together. Today, we spend it at a back table in the library not studying but working on the lyrics of a song.

Songwriting is a very serious business to us. We've dabbled in writing many songs over the years, but most of the songs we've actually worked on playing have been covers since the two of us have agreed that nearly all of what we've written so far is not all that good.

And Sarah and I know good when it comes to country music. We have lists and lists of songs we love and why they're amazing. For the most part, she and I agree on which songs are amazing and which are not. And these assessments of ours have helped us set the benchmark for what we want to accomplish with our own music.

To walk you through a little of how this tends to happen, let me tell you about the first time Sarah heard Sam Hunt's "23." She was captivated even though we're both pretty turned off by the way Sam Hunt talk-sings through a lot of his songs. But this one doesn't have any of that, and she had to share it with me. As we listened to it together, she closed her eyes and savored it. I nodded along to it, easily seeing what she loved about it and hopping on board.

But as we digested the words a little more, we both knew there was something off, something that wasn't good enough. After her second full listen to the song, Sarah announced that there was something missing from the song. "It's haunting and nostalgic, but for what? Some relationship that was never meant to be?"

I thought about this, and I couldn't help but agree. "It's like he thinks they were so in love and perfect when they were twenty-three, but he never even really knew her."

"Exactly!" She was getting excited as we nailed down the problem. "Like she seriously got married to someone else and you're still hung up on this feeling you think you had from the past with her? It feels almost like a rip-off that I'm so invested and attached because of the amazing melody."

And then she WordHippo-ed until she found the perfect word to sum up the problem: hiraeth. It's like a homesickness for something that never actually was.

Is that good or bad in the context of songwriting? We couldn't decide. But we did like that the song made us feeland think and be undecided, even if the bottom line felt incomplete.

And then there was the first time we heard Morgan Wallen's "More Than My Hometown." I am telling you, do notask Sarah about that song unless you want to listen to a very long rant.

We heard it, we loved the beginning, we declared it catchy and were prepared to be fans... And then he finishes the chorus by letting the girl go because he loves his hometown more than he loves her.

Sarah wasn't convinced that it would end on this note. She turned it up and said, "Just wait, that can't be all. It'll be like that old Kenny Chesney song, 'What I Need to Do,' where he ends by changing his mind in the very last line and going back to her."

So we listened and listened, but Morgan Wallen doesn't change his mind.

Sarah was irate. "Screw you, Morgan Wallen! What the hell?" And she was so pissed off about his unromantic and utterly selfish story that she actually rewrote the final verse herself to make it end right, even though it probably wasn't a song we would ever cover ourselves anyway.