What happens when a song casts a spell?

 

What happens when a song casts a spell?

 

Ok, what if a song actually changes reality? I think that these songs actually exist, for instance ‘All You Need is Love’ by the Beatles may not been the cause of the ‘summer of love’ but probably increased its potency as it rode the crest of that wave in 1967.

Heroes by David Bowie was released in 1977, with its references to the Berlin Wall and its ultimate failure along with Bowie’s Berlin concert, leading  to the sudden taking down of the wall in 1989? Ripples in the pool caused by art? Who can really say? 

I am particularly interested in the songs written by people that hint at their ultimate demise. For instance ‘Son of a Gun’ by Kurt Cobain and ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’ by John Lennon, are good examples of this but there are many others.

Tim Buckley’s ‘Song to the Siren’ foretells of the death of his son by drowning many years later and it gets much weirder than that, Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins recorded the song, she also recorded with Tim’s son Jeff Buckley, the two became lovers and Jeff became the character in the song who drowns in the Mississippi in a freak accident.

What about the song that takes us back in our memory or makes us cry or laugh? We all have examples of that I am sure. What is this mysterious power that music has?

In folk music there are lots of examples of songs that have some sort of magical intent. There are songs that seem to be intended as curses and others that contain the impossible task which was popular amongst the cunning folk as they went about their business. A song such as Scarborough Fair contains many impossible tasks asked of an ex-lover,such as making a shirt with no seem and no needlework, and then to wash it in a dry well. There is also a list of protective herbs such as sage rosemary and thyme which was to be believed to be particularly useful against witchcraft. So does this mean that the ex-lover was a witch? Also within the British folk music tradition were references to trees and birds and enchanted people who had met with the fairy folk, in some traditions they were gifted to learn a skill such as playing music, or as a warning that is might not go well dealing with the Realm of the Fay.

Within the blues there is a rich tradition of magical practice which is most evident in the songs of Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson. In fact many of the Muddy Waters songs viewed through the lens of NLP or magical thinking, look like some form of hypnotic suggestion, such as ‘I’ve got my Mojo Working (but it sure don’t work on you). Take out the negative and there you have a magical love spell being cast on anyone who Muddy Waters fancies in the audience.

So I thought it was about time that we explored the possibilities of song-writing using phrases that intend an outcome. This can be done in many ways such as;

All you need is love,

All you need is love,

All you need is love, love,

Love is all you need.

I think this last line is particularly clever in that it is a reworking of the first phrase, and then of course the end of the song is a mantra; Love is All You Need.

 In the outro the song references other songs that include love, like She Loves You.

Make a song that changes your life…….

So if you’re interested in this project and want to go down that rabbit hole visit me at my Patreon site www.Patreon.com/vichyland  

where you will see details of how you could be part of this experiment.

Or send me an email to vichyland@msn.com

 

Vic Hyland