Happening at me
I have a clutch of songs on the go again. It's been ... a while, shall we say. I've been recording, and doing all sorts of preparations for the album, and living a lot, but the songwriting urge has been very quiet of late.

Up jumps the muse and flings things about in my head until tea can just go cook itself, I'm taking the laptop into the summerhouse and humming quietly to myself. There's one with a complex narrative lyric whose melody is taking some teasing out, but which has found a little guitar riff and is going to be very happy; there's one with a big chorus which has just turned inside out on me. There's a silly I started a while back which has just finished itself with a flourish, and there's a lovely thing with herbs in which I started singing on the way back from the lotty. Then there's an absolute uber-doomer which I don't know that I will ever want to inflict on a listening audience, but it might get some phrases out of my head.

The one that turned inside out? The tune was so-so, a bit something and nothing, but I thought the chorus was big enough to carry it. However, I've just had a belt through a whole bunch of things on the guitar (Small Mended Corners, Twelve Gold Horses, Rose of the World, X Libris, Head of a Pin, Jam Tomorrow, Blackthorn Winter, if you really want to know) and found myself finally just holding and strumming a chord, when a delightful thing happened, and my mouth started singing a melody over it. This melody went on into a chord change and repeated itself, then demanded a third chord and flung itself up into chorus-energy. Hold on, I thought, does this fit the lyric I wrote recently... well, yes and no, but I made the lyric reshape a little because the melody is so strong.

It's just a three-chord trick. It sends shivers up my spine. I love when songs happen at me.