Michael Koby

We are coming up the tail end of our look at the songs of Bill Mallonee. We are going to spend the next few weeks looking at some of the songs from Bill’s solo artist records. This week we take a look at “Chameleon Me (Pin My Hope)” from the album Dear Life. Again, do forget to check out the Mp3 Store.

With “Chameleon Me” Bill, continues his happier than normal look at love and relationships. The line “I said yeah you’re right but I believe in happy endings” shows that he knows that the other half of the conversation saw tragedy where the subject of the song is looking at the possibility of happiness. But Mr. Mallonee does something here (and in other songs) that a lot people do not do well when songwriting, he does not think that his audience is stupid but instead assumes they can figure out what’s going on from the context clues of the lines in the song. So often in today’s music, the artist takes the idea that everything needs to be explained to the listener so they fully understand the song. Bill proves this is not the case nine times out of ten and its a good trait to have.

Another really great aspect of this song, is that if you read the lyrics, you have an idea of how they should be sung. You think you know where the accents would fall and where the singer would hold the notes and so forth. But as you actually listen to chorus, you find that it is probably different then what you thought from just reading the lyrics, but for some reason even though it is different you think “wow, that just works” and that is where the other half of songwriting comes in, the melody of the lyrics. Without a solid melodic lyric, the song will fail miserably.

Continue reading →

We are coming up the tail end of our look at the songs of Bill Mallonee. We are going to spend the next few weeks looking at some of the songs from Bill’s solo artist records. This week we take a look at “Chameleon Me (Pin My Hope)” from the album Dear Life. Again, do forget to check out the Mp3 Store.

With “Chameleon Me” Bill, continues his happier than normal look at love and relationships. The line “I said yeah you’re right but I believe in happy endings” shows that he knows that the other half of the conversation saw tragedy where the subject of the song is looking at the possibility of happiness. But Mr. Mallonee does something here (and in other songs) that a lot people do not do well when songwriting, he does not think that his audience is stupid but instead assumes they can figure out what’s going on from the context clues of the lines in the song. So often in today’s music, the artist takes the idea that everything needs to be explained to the listener so they fully understand the song. Bill proves this is not the case nine times out of ten and its a good trait to have.

Another really great aspect of this song, is that if you read the lyrics, you have an idea of how they should be sung. You think you know where the accents would fall and where the singer would hold the notes and so forth. But as you actually listen to chorus, you find that it is probably different then what you thought from just reading the lyrics, but for some reason even though it is different you think “wow, that just works” and that is where the other half of songwriting comes in, the melody of the lyrics. Without a solid melodic lyric, the song will fail miserably.

Continue reading →