Songs That Get Self-Referential

Grand openings, overrated closure and love’s long tail

A couple of years into the new millennium, when I was recording The Instigator, my producer/guru Jon Brion cautioned me against writing “songs that get self-referential.” He said, “no one wants to hear the actual details of your actual life.” For a decade I let this rule steer me away from any lyric that felt like it could have been plucked from my diary, which, if nothing else, during those early years of parenthood and home ownership, kept me from writing any songs about diaper-changing or bathroom renovation.

I began to sense that something was missing from the songs I was writing during those years though, specifically the juicy details, the authenticity of having emerged from within the soul of a specific human being. My songs were getting broader and broader—there were fewer half-empty Empty Bottles and more general observations about “love” and “life.” I chafed at Jon’s edict, until finally on a five-hour flight home from an Old 97’s tour, I decided to break his rule in a big way. I wrote the lyrics to “Longer Than You’ve Been Alive” in a happy trance. It was, and is, my most unabashedly self-referential song. And it tore down a wall.