BIOGRAPHY OF A SONG:  It All Makes Sense At The End, by Edric Haleen

(Originally posted at the “soon-to-be-defunct” Too Much Awesome website [toomuchawesome.ning.com])

THE ORIGINS:

I wrote this song for the third round of Masters of Song Fu #3.  The challenge was to write a song titled “It All Makes Sense At The End,” so a week after the challenge was announced, sixteen songs were posted, all with the self-same title.  It turned out to be a rather difficult song for me to write -- it did not come together readily or easily.  (In fact, it was the first time in four efforts that I actually worried about whether I was going to be without a song a song to submit at all by the end of the week.)  And I went through several initial iterations of an idea before I finally arrived at a final form for the song.

(A note before I go further.  This song treads on religious themes.  I’d like to say right up front that I have nothing but respect for other people’s individual faiths.  Just as I hold my own personal beliefs, I understand that everyone else does as well.  And I love having discussions about faith and religion with other people who are willing to explain and expound upon their beliefs.  But I have very little tolerance when people begin to try to impose their personal faith upon others.  And this leads directly to my critical feelings about organized religion -- as soon as the line is crossed from “believing” to “proselytizing,” I have a problem with it.  And that, ultimately, is what drove my thoughts while writing this song . . .)

People familiar with the earlier Song Fu competitions will recognize the name “Rufus Amos Adams.”  At first, I wanted to “call back” Rufus, and have the song take place at his funeral -- with the singer providing a eulogy for the late Mr. Adams.  I wanted Rufus Amos Adams to have been a deeply religious (Christian) man, who throughout his life had blindly followed his faith through a series of ever-more atrocious acts of persecution and intolerance (of “non-believers”) in the name of religion.  And the eulogizer would have related these anecdotes in praise and memory of the good, “God-fearing” man Rufus had been when he lived.

The problem was, I was trying to have the singer accomplish two completely different ends.  He needed to be completely and fervently behind the things that Rufus had done and believed; yet he still needed to deliver a eulogy laced with irony and contempt for the religion that was being embraced.  As such, the character never sounded “true” to me.  The character always began to sound like an artificial “puppet” whenever I forced the anti-religious sentiments into his mouth.

Once I fixed that problem and finally “wrangled” the idea into something more workable, the song still didn’t come together easily.  In particular -- the music that underpins the enumeration of all the people “bound for hell” took a lot of effort before it coalesced into final form.  (I had lots of little pieces and chords and rhythms that I liked and that I thought could conceivably work in the song, but I was having trouble threading them together into something cohesive that would take the song where it needed to go.)

Eventually, though, the song did come together.  And a song that, as I was writing it, I was afraid I really didn’t like and feared would end up being merely mediocre, turned out to be one of the Song Fu songs I wrote that I like the most.

THE JOURNEY:

Jason Robert Brown described the difference between a “pop music” song and a “theatre song” as such:  A “pop” song strives to create a mood or an atmosphere, and then sustain that mood for the duration of the song (which is usually three to four minutes in length).  A “theatre” song, by contrast, is more of a journey -- by the end of the song, the character singing has progressed (emotionally or intellectually) to a different place than where they were at the beginning of the song.

Well, even though It All Makes Sense At The End has many of the structural characteristics of a “pop” song, I think of it more as a “journey” song.  But interestingly enough, it is not the singer (or the accompanying chorus) who is on the journey -- the singer is delivering a wholly consistent message throughout the entire song.  Rather, it’s the listener who takes a journey.  But the journey is a very particular one.  This song is not designed to “convert” anyone.  And it’s not designed to provide answers -- for anything.  But it is designed (in fact, it is carefully constructed) to be unsettling, as the song gradually but steadily morphs from something that initially appears very straightforward and orthodox (literally!), to something more complex and disturbing -- something that raises questions and invites deeper inspection.

The song starts off in a very straightforward manner, brimming with religiosity.  The spoken introduction and the first verse are very much “in the style” of any number of religious programs, services, or tent revivals.  They are designed to impart to the listener a sense of security -- and not just a “God loves you” type of security, but also a feeling of, “Okay. I know what kind of a song this is. I know where’s he’s going with this...”

Establishing this sense of familiarity early and quickly was important.  For the ground will begin to shift (metaphorically) beneath the listener starting in verse two . . .

When the second verse begins, it seems like it’s going to very strongly parallel the first.  And it does, to a point.  But I made very conscious choices about what kinds of “pain” the leader was going to sing about in each verse.  In verse one, he sings:

        Your house foreclosed?

        You lost your job?

        Your pension gone?

These were all very topical issues at the time the song was written -- but they are also all instances of external pain.  By contrast -- in verse two, we hear:

        Your mother died?

        Your baby died?

        Your son committed

        Suicide?

Each of these is a very personal kind of pain.  And they were chosen to be just that.  They were intended to resonate in a much more immediate, visceral manner than those from the first verse.

Now -- this is the point where Sammy Kablam (one of my friends at TMA) suggested an alternate lyric when we were chatting online.   He said that “Your dog committed suicide” would fit in well with the zaniness of the song.  And it’s certainly a valid option!  But I shared with him (as I share with you now) the reasons why I very deliberately chose “son” for that line.  Originally, I had found myself torn between using “son” or using “friend.”  I thought that the line “Your friend committed suicide” might reach a wider audience -- that more people might have had to cope with a friend dying than a child.  But I ultimately chose “son” instead, and I chose it because while it may be a rarer pain, it’s nevertheless a deeper pain.  It’s a more wrenching thought, and it hits with a much greater punch.

And this is where the ground first begins to shift beneath the listener.  Several of my friends have confirmed that they did, in fact, kind of “sit up and take notice” when they reached those lyrics in verse two.  They were aware that the intensity level had just changed substantially.  And if it’s unsettling when the leader tosses those ideas out, (with so cavalier an attitude) -- it’s designed to be even more so when the leader dismisses those wounds just as quickly with such empty solace as:

        Forget the pain.

        Turn off your brain.

        God’s will is hard to ascertain.

        It all makes sense at the end.

By the end of the second verse, listeners are starting to realize that they need to listen a little more carefully, and to maybe begin to question their initial assumptions about the nature of the song.

Then comes the bridge.  And in the bridge, the rhyme scheme has changed.  As opposed to the rest of the song, where there plenty of rhymes to go around -- in the bridge, nothing rhymes!  And the departure from lines that rhyme begins right away with the interjection that “Human beings aren’t an accident!”  (The fact that this line is delivered with such anger is not only a reflection of how deeply-held a conviction this idea is to many people, but also a further step in forcing the listener to reevaluate their understanding of the song.)

The beginning of the bridge presents a purportedly logical-sounding argument for the existence of a god.  But those tenuous premises are no sooner presented than the leader makes a HUGE (and wholly unsupported) leap to affirm and describe the nature of that god.  And as the adjectives pile up, the music builds and modulates beneath them.  Here, it’s even not necessary to have lines that rhyme.

Rhymes provide forward momentum to a lyric.  They allow the listener to “listen ahead” and anticipate what’s coming next.  (Don’t believe me?  If that wasn’t true, the joke “Rah, rah, ree -- kick ‘em in the knee!  Rah, rah, rass -- kick ‘em in the OTHER knee!” wouldn’t be funny . . .)  In the last eight measures of the bridge, there’s already a wave of momentum provided by the rhythm, the modulation, and the ascending line of the accompaniment.  Rhymes being rendered thus unnecessary, the leader simply flings forth an impassioned list of attributes until we return again to the happy little gospel choir reassuring us that, indeed, “It all makes sense.”

This choir (or, the “sheep,” as they’re officially termed) are also being gradually revealed to the listener throughout the song.  Just like the leader, they are single-minded and wholly consistent in their convictions.  But song is constructed such that they should resonate with the listener in different ways as the song progresses.  At the close of the first verse, they’re simply part of the form of the song -- they reinforce the gospel style of the music.  At the end of the second verse, however, their reassuring refrain has been thrown somewhat into contrast by the harsher emotions that have been stirred up.  And as they lead us out of the bridge, their platitudes are starting to sound more and more like a whitewash job -- a pretty magician’s assistant that diverts our eye from what’s really going on.

The third verse takes a step back from all of this -- at least momentarily.  It reverts to the more traditional language of the religious, and the hopeful optimism and reassurance that the faithful have heard many times before from their leaders and from each other.  But this return to normalcy is soon swept (ripped?) away by the blunt list of 15 “nots” -- a catalog that unflinchingly damns at least 75% (and probably more) of the human race straight to hell.  Like Mark Twain’s The War Prayer -- it’s the unspoken “flip-side” of knowing the way to salvation.  But it’s no longer left unspoken.  It’s delivered with uncompromising and unflinching venom -- building in intensity, and growing to include not just people with differing religious views, but people with differing world-views, as well.

And there’s more going on behind the scenes that adds to the impact of this moment in the song.  No opportunity is spared.  Unlike in the bridge, this section continues with a very well-defined rhyme scheme to add drive to the lyric.  The left hand of the piano accompaniment is delivering a constant stream of eighth notes, while the right hand delivers an accented syncopation every two measures.  And beyond that, the piano accompaniment does not return to a resolved, tonic chord throughout this entire section.  Starting with the word “heaven,” the chords stay unresolved through the entirety of the “list of the damned” -- including a particularly fun C#7sus4/D chord that underpins the Indian religions.  (Did you notice that the major religions were grouped more or less geographically?)  This sustained lack of resolution only adds even more tension of this section of the song.

By the time we arrive at the Marxists, the accompaniment is still unresolved, but we’ve reach a more recognizable chord progression.  By the time we address the pro-choice, the gays, and the liberals, the listener is definitely aware of the direction that the music is going, and by the time the leader summarily dismisses the atheists, everyone is being swept inexorably together towards the first resolved, tonic chord we’ve heard for twenty-four measures.

And who’s there to greet us when we reach that release?

At the end of the song, it truly all makes sense.  We have now reached a point where we completely understand who everyone really is.  The joyful choristers truly are sheep -- blindly following the leader; blithely unaware of the implications; and at least one of them (“Praise Jebus!”), completely clueless.  The leader?  An evangelist of the most malignant sort-- trying to convert minds by any means he can, and striving to raise money, ostensibly to continue his good work.  All of them blissfully sure that they are right, and all too happy to “write off” anyone who clings to a system of beliefs different from their own.