A Song A Day: #3

"Go on," I said to my friend Hugh over lunch, "give me a word, and I'll put it in today's song. I need all the help I can get."
"Oh, I don't know," said Hugh. "Something about the Metro. You know, the free paper."

I'd been feeling pretty smug about yesterday's effort, playing and singing it lots and thinking about what a soulful genius I was. But then I noticed I had 2 hours in which to write something before I had to leave for a pub quiz. So. I'm afraid I took a lazy way out. Hugh's suggestion about the Metro reminded me that I'd had a vague idea to write a light-hearted song about love on the Tube. I went back to an old notebook and found a few scribbles. I also thought I could get away with incorporating bits from a little 4-line poem on the same subject I wrote years ago, in which I ingeniously rhyme "charming filly" with "Piccadilly", and "pretty" with "Hammersmith & City".

The opening couplet of my song dealt with the Metro:

At first our love seemed perfect; it went off without a hiccup
Then you left me like a freesheet for somebody else to pick up...

And subsequently the song was an excuse for some dodgy wordplay on names of Tube lines and stations. But, I dunno, some of it's quite funny, and I'm pleased I managed to fit in the word "phantasmagoria" (to rhyme with Victoria - I had to look it up to check what it meant). Lyrically I was aiming for a Flanders and Swann vibe, but then when I came to write the music it turned out a bit more 1920s / Noel Coward (or rather Monty Python 'doing' Noel Coward). It's called Maida Vale, because I make a wildly original pun on said tube stop at the end of the song.

So. Day 1: silly song, finding some kind of emotional centre by the end. Day 2: emotional song, slightly ashamed of its own emotionalness. Day 3: just silly.

WHO KNOWS what Day 4 will bring...