The lockdown atmosphere really set in this week, and I found myself having to adapt to a new routine. However, I still managed to find time for the important things: like songwriting, of course. Inspired by the interpersonal distance that I was experiencing, I wrote a song for love in the time of coronavirus called Isolation Girl, and uploaded it to SoundCloud. It’s a moody morsel of lo-fi bedroom pop production wise, but I wrote the chords with an old-school Bacharach kind of intent, to juxtapose the modern feeling with a timeless sentiment.
https://soundcloud.com/jachin-mee/isolation-girl
My primary intake of music this week though came from the new album of English singer Dua Lipa Future Nostalgia. Lipa infuses her brand of radio-ready pop with refreshingly vibrant musical ideas, such as the dancehall inspired percussion on 2017 hit “New Rules”. My main takeaway from her newest record is how clever her melodies are rhythmically – such as how the rapid-fire verse cascade of “Levitating” cleverly builds momentum, or the sparse phrases of the chorus of “Don’t Start Now” allow the underpinning funk bass to shine. Hopefully, I can use this shrewd melodic approach in my own pop songwriting.
Song Of The Week is “Good In Bed” by Dua Lipa. My favourite bit is the little laugh that she does at 2:48 after bluntly singing, “We don’t know how to talk, but damn we know how to fuck.”5 Cheeky, but also sets up the entry of the last chorus nicely.
5Dua Lipa. “Good In Bed”. Future Nostalgia. Warner Records, 2020.
Jachin's Songwriting and Performance Journal 