Do: evoke a powerful memory

Paw - Jessie

Paw only managed to release two albums before their demise. This, their finest track, is lifted from their 1993 debut Dragline and showcases their signature mix of thrash rock guitars, melody, and country music. But what really makes this song is the tale it tells. It’s the coming-of-age story of the guitarist as a child and his dog, Jessie, and can be summarised as follows: boy runs away from home, dog follows, boy loses dog, boy comes home without dog. The verses tell us the narrative, but the words are phrased as though the little boy is telling his parents and is so upset he can’t string a sentence together:

I ran away, dog tagged along
I lost the dog, it broke my heart

whilst the chorus is sung from the perspective of the boy talking to his dog. It doesn’t go anywhere complicated lyrically—it is a child talking after all—it just perfectly captures the emotion of a boy’s experience.

Do: be unafraid of sentiment, if it comes from the heart

The Streets - Never Went To Church

Mike Skinner is a master of empathetic writing. Whether he is writing about blokes fighting or the trappings of fame, you’re with him all the way. This track from his recently released The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living is a hymn of remembrance for his deceased father. Skinner goes the usual route: by hoping his dad is proud of him and saying the things he wasn’t able to when he was alive, but embraces and avoids cliché in exactly the right amounts. He articulates the obvious in ways that sound profound, but are accessible to everyone. Lines such as

When I do something like you you’ll be on my mind or through
‘Cause I forgot you left me behind to remind me of you

aren’t lofty metaphorical pronouncements on the human state that require a poetic mind to unravel but simple truths immediately recognisable.

Don’t: have a one-size-fits-all ode to the latest dead lady

Elton John - Candle in the Wind ’97

It’s hard to really express what a superficial, populist, and ultimately cheap gesture this song is. This is another true story and this one goes: Diana dies, the country goes ape-shit with grief for someone they were moaning about six months earlier, Diana and Elton John were friends, he had a song about a dead famous blonde, the people demanded another one, Elton John changes the lyrics, everyone buys record thus somehow absolving themselves of guilt for moaning about Diana six months ago.

Even if you’re less cynical about the events surrounding it, you’d still be left with a song that could best be summarized as shit on a plate. Without the plate. Exhibit A:

This torch we`ll always carry for our Nation`s golden child .
And even though we try , the truth brings us to tears;
All our tears cannot express
The joy you brought us through the years

In a way the adapting of his own ode to Marilyn Monroe was creepily appropriate. Here was a woman (Monroe) whom Elton John had never known, in fact all he really knew about her was the image she chose to project, and yet he mourned her death in much the same way that the rest of the world mourned Diana’s. Elton John may have known Diana, but the lyrics are so banal it sounds like the musical equivalent of leaving flowers on a stranger’s grave.

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