The Song Fight Bulletin Board

It gets a little quiet around here sometimes. Figured i might ask a question today.

QotD:
What is the story behind your most successful Songfight song? (Which song you think if your most successful is a matter of your own opinion.)

The story of "Cute Boots" by Niveous.

"Cute Boots" was the live fight for the first Songfight show that I had ever thrown- Songfight Presents @ Goodbye Blue Monday, a crazy hodgepodge of a place out in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. I had spent a lot of time organizing the show and Saturday had gone off pretty well. The live fight was going to be a part of the second show on Sunday night. I hadn't put a lot of thought into doing the live fight but made a gameday decision in which to do so. I ended up writing the lyrics for the song on the way to the venue, jotting them down in a little notebook on the way to the venue. I looked at the title which I disliked at the time and wondered how I would work it. I tend to enjoy writing darker lyrics, so I tried to find a way to make Cute Boots dark and that's when my mind went to a really dark place- missing children. At this time, my kids were about 8 & 6 and I was having parenting nerves. At some point, I had heard the saying that the two worst things to outlive are your dreams and your children. Outliving your kids or having one go missing was absolutely the scariest thought, so I ran with it. You can see really see that inspiration at the beginning of the second verse: "The death of a child is a parent's greatest pain".

I got to the venue and I barely had much of a chance to rehearse it. The live fight was very small: me, Jim Tyrrell and Roymond. That added a little nerves to the whole thing so that may show up in the recording, but being a dad, I really channeled the theme. I may have changed the sex of the kid and made them older and made it a story of misguided love but the big thing for me about "Cute Boots" is it's a song about a desperate father who is worrying about his child. The emotion poured out.

Then there was a little luck that gave the whole thing some atmosphere. The mic that recorded the show was hanging from the ceiling, so it picked up all the talk in the room. There I was getting emotional and there was a Sunday night crowd wanting to get their drink on. The dichotomy of it all helped the tone so much. "Cute Boots" was born.

The song has changed a bit through time as there's the usual guy and guitar version and the version I've done recently at SF Live shows which is a full band version which has a slightly different feel. I call that version The Prom Night Version because it has a bit more of a sixties R&B feel (Think Otis Redding or maybe REM's Everybody Hurts). No matter which version I play, one thing remains. I still get a little shook. My kids are older now but I will never let go of that fear.

Yeah, that was a great moment.
I'm not sure what my most successful song might be, but I at least wanted to affirm what you said.
-bill

Well votes wise, I think it's Iron Goddess of Mercy. It was my first ever collab with anyone on SF. Me and Posyden (aka Atlantean aka Shadow Speaker) got together for a few songs as Destruction Enterprises.

The beat used for the dual rap song was a royalty free beat that Posyden found off some site. We didn't plan out the lyrics at all. I did the first verse and sent it to him. He did the 2nd and sent it back to me, repeating the process until we reached the end of the song. It turned out great, and it was easily my best rap work to date (maybe ever).

I believe we even tied for 3rd place on that fight.

Jerkatorium's first win was the "Hope You're Having A Nice Time In Jamaica" fight, and winning that fight taught me what people are really looking for in a song: dick jokes.

I still have no idea why people liked my two winning songs (Baby Be Quiet, Sorry To Inform You) enough to vote for them more than everyone else. Especially Sorry To Inform You. I always felt that Manhattan Glutton's was far superior to mine. But I guess I did the nerd-pandering GLaDoS thing?

Both of my winners have one specific thing in common: weird glitchy percussion that I made by routing Logic's "electroclash" drum kit through a very warbly tape delay and then rhythmically banging on my keyboard a bunch. Clearly that's a recipe for success, right?

No winning songs, but "Be What You Want" was chosen by Habitat SF for their video. I realized they wanted to recruit young women from Americorps, so I looked for ideas on that site, on Habitat, and tried to guess why [she] would put on headphones to block out people who were yelling encouragement at her. They wanted upbeat and badass. I gave them upbeat, and joke that I also gave them the bad and the ass.

My most successful song (by votes) was a collab I did with my friend Matt under the name Glennwood (our old band name) for "In the Valley". Not much of a story behind it, except that it was one of the two songs that I did with Matt where we had live recorded drums. I kept the mix less cluttered by making it just guitar and keyboards behind the drums. Matt did do a good job with the drums, I must say.