Jana Losey: MUSIC

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FROM MEL:
I remember driving to a show, just Jana and myself......we were in the old red van we had. Jana started singing a melody.......she picked up her note book and started writing. Not an uncommon event. She sang out loud a few measures of what was in her head.......I thought to myself......."ouch", the lyrics were so strong I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. My first reaction was......"there is NO WAY we can work that into a song, it's just too damn sad!!".

A few months later, we were driving again, I think to either Pittsburgh or Philly, and she started singing it again, by now she had completed several verses and the chorus, and again I thought it was just so upsetting that I had a really hard time "hearing how the music would go to such a sad tune". After we returned from that trip we sat down in the living room (where most joint creative sessions take place), Jana on piano and myself on what we call the "hit writing guitar".......a cheap Martin, and we started playing with chord changes. I knew the song had to have a pop feel, and a really simple, yet not predictable, arrangement. So after finding the right chord progression for the verses, the chorus came along easily........then we were stuck. Where does it go from here?? It has to move the listener both musically as well as lyrically, and my pop sensibility told me it had to be light on it's feet so that the first time listener didn't get the punch in the stomach, but the repeat listener did.

The answer was in modulating the choruses, something we hadn't done before in a song. And once we did it the first time (where the lyrics read "cold-cold night") it seemed only logical to do it again after the guitar solo. This way we could build the song up while repeating the theme and not be repetitive.

The result....... is still a punch in the stomach for me every single time....... I have since realized that is the point of the song, and I was it's first victim. :)

Jana says it's based on the experience her Grandmother had, and what Jana would interpret the experience would be first hand. Wow, who thinks like that?? I am continually amazed.

FIVE DAYS

For five days she lay by the back door
For five days she tried to get out of her body
It was five days the same – five days the same
Five days that no one came

I never realized the ceiling was so dirty – all those spiders making webs
There was life and death in all my corners
And me not noticing them up there at all

When something’s wrong you check out – you check out
When something’s wrong you check out – you check out
When something’s wrong you check out – you check out
And something’s wrong now

I never realized the wallpaper was so pretty
So many flowers – patterns of 2 and 4 and 6 and 9
I never knew the floor was this damn drafty
It’s gonna be a cold-cold night

When something’s wrong you check out – you check out
When something’s wrong you check out – you check out
When something’s wrong you check out – you check out
And something’s wrong now

For five days she lay by the back doot
For five days she tried to get out of her body

When something’s wrong you check out – you check out
When something’s wrong you check out – you check out
When something’s wrong you check out – you check out
And something’s wrong now


Lyrics by Jana Losey (BMI)
Music by Melanie Peters and Jana Losey (ASCAP)
2007