I remember the evenings when I wrote the lyrics to our song “Out of Control” – how I enjoyed being scared and being part of the evil I was directing in my inner self.
When I write music, I work with emotions, 92% is all emotions. I see pictures, sequences of events are played out in my head and my music center inside my head is wondering, ”How could these pictures be turned into music?”
In “Out of Control” I wanted to create a sense of stress and fear: the stress that the main character feels and the fear that I felt myself while composing. I wanted the guitar riffs to mirror my thoughts, and I wanted them to be hard (and hopefully sound good too). The background of the guitar solo is also an attempt to create an additional stress (the key change), likewise the drums in the finishing arpeggio, which is also intended to be a kind of a dreamy resolution. After trying a few lines of lyrics, I also noticed that the tempo (the stress) increased when I let the rhythm of the words function as drums; they complemented and emphasized. An example of this is the first verse, “I might not be the one to turn to when your life’s falling apart.” The rhythm that I created when using the words “be the one to turn to” became crucial for how the lyrics would develop. The rhythm accentuates the drums and the bass, and it contributes to the stress that I want to bring out.
Some lyrics are easier to write than others. In “Out of Control,” I had a whole movie inside my head to work with. The film’s basic idea was the nightmarish fear that we experience in our adolescence (or is it just me?). The idea came from the moment we turn off the lights when we go to bed. When we turn off the lights, we see a dark figure in the corner of the room. We turn on the light again, and it is gone; we turn off again, and there it is once more, watching, waiting. We know that it is looking straight at us and just waiting for us to fall asleep. In the narrative of “Out of Control,” the evil has already happened. The monster in the corner has already taken over. It is there inside, the main character, in total control. In sleep bad things happen, an unconscious evil, a loss of control of the self that is impossible to resist. I’m still afraid of the idea.
In my writing, I am a part of the events. I am the empathic observer and I experience the inner film, both as the man possessed and as a witness to the evil events. It is more exciting and horrible than any movie I can watch in reality because it is 92% my own experience and emotion. I remember the evenings when I wrote the lyrics to our song “Out of Control” – how I enjoyed being scared and being part of the evil I directed in my inner self. “Out of control” is still one of my favorite movies.