TV Children

[session9]

This might be verging on spam, seeing as I posted my first one up yesterday, but I've been adding critique where I feel able to (I'm not going to try and critique a piece if I don't understand it or if I don't feel I have anything constructive to say from now on). Anyway, here goes. Think "QOTSA covering Roadhouse Blues" for the music, and you might get a clue of where I was coming from when I wrote it:

TV Children

TV Children grow up mean
Hypnotised by TV screen
Teenage soldiers, virtual war
Reaping bodies by the score

Beardy-weirdy on the daily news
Silent scapegoat, satellite views
Fill his body with hot lead!
Shoot the turban from his head!
TV Children grow up mean...

TV Children grow up fast
Innocence has long since passed
Popping up in red-light zones
Gyno cams and jaded moans

Money shot, a cupid stunt
Silicon with a silicone front
Paying an inflated price
For their plastic paradise
TV Children grow up fast...

TV children grow up dumb,
Waiting for a chance to come;
Don't they know it's far too late
By the time they trust in fate?

Gambling their hopes away
As the stakes are raised each day
Spin that wheel, hold your breath
All you win from life is death
TV Children grow up dumb...

(My band have a song for this, but they've put it back in the "to be worked on" pile as they think it's a bit boring. Pity, I liked it. But I would.)

[Deathapalooza04]

I'm assuming you want a critique, so here it is:

TV Children grow up mean
Hypnotised by TV screen<nix the second "TV" and substitute "the" or something else.
Teenage soldiers, virtual war<as fake as it may seem, the real thing is going on.
Reaping bodies by the score<I'm unsure about the word "reaping".

Beardy-weirdy on the daily news<beardy-weirdy.....Unsure about it.
Silent scapegoat, satellite views<nice "bubbly" rhyming.
Fill his body with hot lead!
Shoot the turban from his head!
TV Children grow up mean...<This paragraph doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me

TV Children grow up fast
Innocence has long since passed
Popping up in red-light zones
Gyno cams and jaded moans<I like these 4 lines. Nice flow

Money shot, a cupid stunt
Silicon with a silicone front
Paying an inflated price
For their plastic paradise< I like this line and the one above it. The rest is meh.
TV Children grow up fast...

TV children grow up dumb,
Waiting for a chance to come;
Don't they know it's far too late
By the time they trust to fate?<decent paragraph but I think this line needs tweaking.

Gambling their hopes away
As the stakes are raised each day
Spin that wheel, hold your breath
All you win from life is death<Best paragraph in the whole song, nice rhyming, images.
TV Children grow up dumb...

*********************
Edit: Nevermind I'll keep my opinions to my self.

[session9]

I realise some of the stuff brought up in this one could lead to the standard political flame wars that tend to spring up on messageboards, and I'd like to avoid that if at all possible.

So if subsequent posters could keep all their comments on-topic, i.e. about technical aspects of the writing (alternative word choices, turns of phrase they liked/hated, any bits that seem incongruous, that kind of thing) rather than posting opinion pieces or diatribes about the subject matter, I'd appreciate it, thanks.

Anyway, that said, a short explanation of what I intended to express:

The song is verse/chorus, but each chorus is different and relates to the verse preceeding it.

The first verse is mainly about the effects of dumbing-down our news and increasing the level of violence in our entertainment being that we look for "demons" to kill rather than examine the underlying problems that each "demon" usually represents.

The second is obviously about how sex and technology seem to have a co-dependent relationship, and how sex is used to sell us new technological solutions to problems that don't exist in the form they are sold to us by those who push the solutions.

The third is mainly about dumbing-down, and how the concept of earning your fortune (through working, application of knowledge gained through education, and demonstration of initiative) seems to be going out of fashion in favour of the ideal of an "instant millionaire", and how that can lead to a downward spiral of debt, crime and degradation into eventual death.

Okay, so there's a lot packed into a little song, and it's not all made explicit, but that's kind of what I wanted to express, anyway. If you don't think I achieved that, and/or if you have suggestions as to how I could do so, please let me know.

[Deathapalooza04]

OK. The writing is technically perfect: You have one word in front of another and they are spelled correctly and properly punctuated.

[session9]

Okay. Well, thank you for (most of) your previous comments, anyway. I haven't decided about using any of your suggestions as yet, but that may change once I give them consideration, in due time.

Now then, has anyone else got any other suggestions? Or perhaps they would like to echo some of the comments in the first reply? I'd be glad to read your posts.

[session9]

(And anyway, they're not properly punctuated.)

[Merkaba]

Haaaaaaa! I like this. I do! Different......but i like it alot....i lak it aluh.....
And that one line...Tv children grow up mean. I like that for some reason. its simple, and kinda has this raw everyday in the home kinda feel to it. "grow up mean" i love that. the grow up dumb paragraph could use a little more work. i know what youre trying to say but i think you could say it a tad mo' betta!
good job. me likes. me likes.

[Merkaba]

maybe its just the trust TO fate that doesnt work for me. just trust in fate....you dont have to get all poetical and use some syntax flip to try to add to it. let it be what it is.
I like this song...****.

Tv children grow up mean!
the thing is that youre really dead on correct with the topic of this song. And we use the tv for a baby sitter nowadays. Good stuff man.

[Merkaba]

maybe its just the trust TO fate that doesnt work for me. just trust in fate....you dont have to get all poetical and use some syntax flip to try to add to it. let it be what it is.
I like this song...damn!

Tv children grow up mean!
the thing is that youre really dead on correct with the topic of this song. And we use the tv for a baby sitter nowadays. Good stuff man.

[session9]

Yeah, I'm at a loss as to what to do with it, but I know what you mean. That's why I started posting stuff in here, stuff that I was having trouble with. It's like with this, I'm trying to imply a lot of stuff that doesn't really follow logically from what's explicit, and it doesn't really work. I'll just have to keep plugging away at it in the hope of getting it right eventually.

Glad that you got a chuckle out of it, anyway. I try and include a cute turn of phrase or something to raise a wry smile when I write stuff like this, otherwise it's all a bit monotonous and gloomy when I try to be serious all the way through.

(I don't have favourites, but "silicon with a silicone front" was one that stood out (erm...so to speak) for me when I wrote it.)

[session9]

Yeah, maybe "trust in fate" is better. I don't know why I went with "to" now anyway... I'll change it and look at it for a while, see how I like it.

[session9]

Thinking about the revision I made on Merk's advice...I don't like it. I think "trust to fate" works better for me, when sung with the previous line. I like the almost identical pattern of "too late"/"to fate". Also, this point in the song is when it gets really heavy, just before an instrumental break, and for some reason I feel more comfortable singing a word like "to" with increasing power than "in", it's the percussive quality of the letter T I think, it gives it that "bursting out of the blocks" feeling that the word "in" doesn't have. That probably makes no sense to anyone else, but that's the reason I'm going to change it back soon.

[i am the robots]

me like

[orange]

it sounds like a sick children's nursery rhyme, like ring around the rosy. it sounds childish but has a disturbing meaning

[session9]

Yeah, I was going for that kind of feel at first, but I stood back from that a little bit, because I didn't want people to think it was about children. I think it's more about the generation I grew up in (and subsequent generations), and how TV took the role of God, father, head of the family etc, when the nuclear family turned radioactive...and turned everyone into vapid celebrity-obsessed ADD sufferers with no more grasp of the realities of life than a child.

[espf-250htd06]

i hate this not my style i guess is the reason and its just to punkish on an overused topic i admit the writing is good in some lines but idk i just dont like it 6/10 check out my song past desires

[session9]

Have you got any specific bits that you'd like to point out as being especially bad? It might help me to make it better if I knew what was speicifcally wrong with it, you see..

[espf-250htd06]

TV Children grow up mean
Hypnotised by TV screen

TV children grow up dumb,
Waiting for a chance to come;
Don't they know it's far too late

All you win from life is death
TV Children grow up dumb...


idk dude its just to blunt thats whats punkish about it them are the lines that stuck out to me as not good i work on sugesstions but i dont like writing other people's songs cya lata

[session9]

That's the whole point of the song, Different strokes. I like to be as blunt as I can; you seem to prefer vague allusion based on what I've read so far. Let's agree to differ on approach, okay? Bye!

Now then - anyone else? Someone who understands why I might want to write in this way, and also might have some suggestions for how it could be made better?

[espf-250htd06]

lol why u gota be so bitchy about everthing dang i dont hate u and everything u write i just simply critted ur song with my opioin.

[session9]

I'm not trying to be "bitchy", just move things along where they threaten to be unproductive and sidetrack the point of the thread, which was to elicit constructive criticism. I mean, I can't very well rip the guts out of what is a fairly blunt song because you don't like bluntness, can I? And, whilst what I said about your style of writing is true in my opinion, it's not necessarily a bad thing - some songwriters do that to great effect.

[session9]

Right, now that's over let's move on.

[i am the robots]

it sounds like a sick children's nursery rhyme, like ring around the rosy. it sounds childish but has a disturbing meaning

Shoots And Ladders anybody?

[A_Perfect_Sonnet]

i thought the way you took a worn out subject (the war) and created something refreshing by putting sort of a sarcastic tone on it, made it all the better. all and all i liked it, and could see it working as a song (since youve probably already written music to it)

[session9]

Well, I tried to touch on that subject in the first verse, without it being the whole focus of what I was writing about. It's more about (in my mind) sensationalising violence, media demonisation and lack of adherence to facts in the face of a good story, how some entertainment software houses are in cahoots with the military and produce interactive shooting galleries that glorify killing and wars in general (something I neglected to mention before, but don't think I'm interpreting it after the fact, that's one of the things that was on my mind, having worked with game developers in the past), than it is about any specifc war. I think the songs is a bit unclear on that last point, so maybe I'll look at it again. But thanks, glad you thought it was worth a read!

And now I am really tired. ZZZzzzzzzzzzz.........