Day 7: Down the Hall (Under the Chandelier)

 

Day 7: Down the Hall (Under the Chandelier)

Part of my song-a-day writing project for January 2024. Also day 1 of this month’s Fearless Songwriting challenge

Lyrics:

Down the hall, dancin' in the shadows
Down the hall, dancin' in the shadows
Down the hall, under the chandelier

There's a flicker of light
Coming from the candles
You can get funky
If you got the handles
Down the hall, under the chandelier

You don't have to be rich
Don't have to be hot
You like to boogie?
Show us what you got
Down the hall, under the chandelier

There's an old ballroom
In a run down mansion
5 miles south of 10th and Grange
And a cat will let you in

Down the hall, dancin' in the shadows
Down the hall, dancin' in the shadows
Down the hall, under the chandelier

There's a silhouette dancing
For the first time
He never thought he'd be
Dancing after midnight
Down the hall, under the chandelier

There's a party girl
Swinging from the fixtures
She won't remember
But we got the pictures
Down the hall, under the chandelier

There's an old ballroom
In a run down mansion
5 miles south of 10th and Grange
And a cat will let you in

Down the hall, dancin' in the shadows
Down the hall, dancin' in the shadows
Down the hall, under the chandelier

***

Details: I was supposed to do a co-write tonight with Karen Finch, but in the process of cleaning the house for her visit, I tried to fix a slow draining toilet and ended making things much worse. Karen did come over, but she ended up helping me fix the clog. Let me tell you, Karen knows what she'd doing! She taught me quite a bit.

Anyway, I bought her dinner as a thank you, and it was getting kind of late, so we decided to postpone our co-write until later in the month. I went home and took a short nap.

But I still had to write a song. Luckily, this week is The Fearless Songwriter challenge! Timmy Riordan challenges folks to write a song everyday for a week. I'm already doing that, but his challenge involves prompts, so I didn't have come up with an idea completely off the cuff. The prompt for today was "Down the Hall".

I don't know why, but I started singing "Down the hall, up in the ceiling" with a disco kind of beat. I was just playing around, but then I thought, why not? The "up in the ceiling" part didn't make any sense to me-- sounded more like a horror movie-- so I changed it to chandelier.

Of course, any song about chandeliers needs to have a reference to Sia's big hit "Chandelier", so the first verse I wrote was the last verse in the song, which references a party girl swinging from the fixtures.

Other than that, I thought about the Bobby Fuller Four's song "Let Her Dance" which is dirt simple, but is insanely catchy and has a relentless groove. I wanted to do something that simple and propulsive, though I always worry about being repetitive, so I decided to keep in short.

Not much else to say, other than the idea that a cat was letting people into the ballroom was completely random and I love it. That line will not change if and when I get into revising it...