The Song Fight Bulletin Board

One of the examples of the challenge was a Beach Boys song, and the title contains the word "Beach," so I went for the obvious approach, musically, and did a pastiche of the Beach Boys, and tried not to overthink it. Since the title also contains the word "Vampires," which is an image quite incongruous with the mood I associate with the beach, I chose to lean into that incongruity and made it a song about some lovable monsters... or rather, comparing myself and a non-specific group of a million people to these lovable monsters. Each monster is described either looking silly, doing something silly, acting incongruously with their myth, or is seen in a place where they don't belong.

I also leaned heavily on prosodic techniques like assonance and alliteration to reach for silly images that still felt good to sing. So, for instance, Nosferatu with a pompadour, a sea creature at a ski lodge, a kraken on the wing of a plane, cadejos skipping rope, and of course... Technicolor Chupacabras. (I hope Grumpy Mike will be pleased to note that, at long last, when the Chupacabra appears in my lyrics, it's actually a Chupacabra.) Using these silly images definitely pushed the song's genre beyond "Beach Boys pastiche" and into "60s novelty single" territory, so I did a silly vampire voice at the very beginning to prime the expectation for silliness right off the bat. One person I showed this to advised against this intro, but I'm trusting my instincts and leaving it in.

There are several words and phrases in my lyrics which I annotated over on [urlhttps://songfight.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11820]Ye Olde Lyric Archive[/url] with hyperlinks. I'm not sure any of these are strictly necessary to understanding the idea of the song, but if you were curious what a cadejo is, or Baba Yaga, or perhaps wondered about that one thing being shouted at the end, you can find it there. I'm aware that many listeners (and at least one judge) wants the song to stand on its own and chooses not to read along with the lyrics. I totally understand that - it was my intention for the song to bop regardless of whether you've done the homework, and I hope that comes through.

Musically, the verses start and stop a bit, which I intended to be musically symbolic of a monster's shambling gait. There's a harmonica solo in the middle. I thought a saxophone would have been better, but I didn't like the sound of any of my VSTs, so stuck with the acoustic instrument. I actually bought a new harmonica specifically for this song, because my old "A" harmonica was cheap and had some bent-out reeds.