A.L.E.X. – A special song

Every songwriter has a song with a special meaning, written in a perfect setting and just feels right. My special song is a pop ballad called “A.L.E.X.” which accompanied me for half of my life. Let us analyse it from a musical and personal point of view.

The real meaning of the lyrics

I still remember the day, the idea for this song came into my mind. I was 15 years old and on my way back home, waiting for a tram that didn’t come. Out of sudden the abbreviation A.L.E.X. came into my mind and the fictional story about a young man. His name was Alex, an introverted guy who quitted school, because he did not match the requirements of the system. I don’t know if he’s a lazy, intelligent person or a bad boy who just did not have the guts to show it to the public. He’s the sort of guy who had everything and was not aware of his wealth. Nobody knows which of the adventurous stories he tells is real or fake. He thought he could do it all alone by constructing his own universe, but he suffocated in his own problems.

I imagined a former classmate meeting him ten or twenty years after he quit school. He looks at you with these shiny eyes full of despair and a shame of failure. It takes some seconds until you realize, that you know this person, but he was never a friend, just someone you barely knew. Alex ended up on the streets, whereas you fulfilled nearly everything in your life. How can life be so cruel, cause you both sat in the same classroom a some years ago?!

I knew “A.L.E.X.” will be a song about drug abuse. Though the whole imagery speaks for someone who takes hard drugs, I decided to take ecstasy as pars pro toto, because it is abbreviated as XTC. The title of this song became “A.L.E.X.”, which can be read as a name or a backronym for “All Lies Excused with Ecstasy”.

Though this song is pure fiction, the intention of the lyrics are real. This song shall inspire you to do something with your life, no matter what happened. Follow your heart instead of impressing other people. This is why the song ends with “life needn’t be a misery” and not with “don’t do drugs”. It’s a song about a guy, who was not able to fix his problems and ended up badly. But there’s still hope!

Kissed by a muse

Looking back, “A.L.E.X.” is also a special song for me as a lyricist and songwriter. First, it’s been written in a phase where I was deep into electronic music and had no idea about pop music in general. I did not know how to play grace notes, trill and pedals on piano, but I just wrote something down that needed these techniques. Some months after, I had a super hard time understanding the chords and scales I used. Modulation and diminished chords have been completely unknown to me. Just listen to the songs I wrote around 2006. This is a completely different level of songwriting!

If unexplainable things like this happen, I call this a kiss of a muse. Ever since I wrote this song, I wanted to make it happen. My former music teacher has been flabbergasted, when I have shown him my sketch. He urged me to realize it. Finding musicians was very hard for me, because I completely lacked of references in handmade music. Nobody understood, why I came up with a serious ballad, when I only produced banging electro tunes. So this song laid on my desk for years.

Sometimes, coincidences happen, and you meet the right people at the right time. When I heard singer-songwriter Roman for the first time, I knew that he has the perfect voice for that song. Some months after, I got to know guitarist Alex and had a long talk about songwriting. We recorded vocals and guitar, but the piano was programmed, because I was not able to play it satisfyingly. I could have finished this song as a mixed production with synthetic drums, bass and strings, but other things happened in my life, leading to another postponement.

Personal and musical growth

Procrastination ain’t my thing, but I feel like the universe wanted me to wait for the right moment for this song to come to life. I had to grow up to understand my own lyrics. Last year, when I sat down on the piano and tried to play it, magic happened. I felt the melancholic heaviness of this song, and I had the urge to redo the complete arrangement.

Suddenly, my synthetic instruments didn’t feel right, so I asked Chad, who did a super cool performance on drums and bass. His groove made the song come to life. With a real drum set and a real electronic bass, my programmed piano sounded so awkward, that I had to play it by myself. It took me months to learn trill, arpeggios and grace notes. Now, everything except for the string section has been performed on real instruments and sounded more organic than ever. We decided to re-program the string section and I had a deep dive into arrangement. I barely imagine how “A.L.E.X.” would sound like if the orchestra were real!

Working with good musicians means, that the bar is set higher than expected. Until now, “A.L.E.X.” is the musically and personally most demanding song I wrote and performed. I grew a lot as a musician, using techniques and chords I never thought of. But the most important thing is, that I played with emotion. I also grew as a person, because I learned that good things take time. Even if it’s fiction, every pair of lyrics have something real inside, like a feeling or a thought. You have to find that special thing inside your song to make it happen.

I am so thankful, that you took that journey with me, even if it took half of my life. You turned this song into something special. Something, I am very proud of!