All You're Getting

 Listen

Love songs are hard to write without going down roads so syrupy sweet that you slip and fall.  So my strategy in this one was simply to allude to other "love songs."  If I could just get rid of that designation, then I'd be ok.

This is one of the oldest songs of mine still in existence.  (Believe me, there's about 12 years-worth of terrible stuff I've written that's happily collecting dust on the ash-heap of my creative history...hmm...dust collecting on ashes...could be a song there.)

Most of my songs begin as a line or two around which I build the rest of the song.  Rarely is there any grand vision for the whole thing.  Here's how it works: I'm driving or something and a rhyming pair of lines comes to me; then, I scramble to scribble it down in the notebook on the passenger seat without causing some horrible wreck.  Later, I revisit that pair of lines and see if it can grow organically into something.  Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

For this song, the first two lines are the core, the building block, my favorite.

"All You're Getting"

Instrumentation: guitar, mandolin

I'd love to get real small and sleep for a while 

In the creases of the corners of your eyes when you smile

When I'd wake up I'd dive into your eyes

As green as the grass under radiant blue skies

Thank God you're here, 'cause I was losing my imagination

Real friends are much better than the product of my own mind's creation

I gave all my love songs to that fantasy girl running 'round in my head

So you, you'll just have to deal with getting me instead

Then I'd get lost in the thoughts of your mind

My cares vanish in the air, and just you I'd find

I'd love a world where it's just you, me, and sky

I'd give you every star above to burn off the tears in your eyes

Thank God you're here...

Your smile would lift any curse

Your eyes sparkle like champagne, kinda like rain in reverse

Lifting me up to the top of this skyline

And it's a party from rooftop to rooftop, taking in all that moonshine

Thanks God you're here...