As It Happens: Song A Day

As It Happens: Song A Day

By Jonathan MannMusic
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As It Happens: Song A Day episodes

  • A Good Ol' Fashioned Song Fight!
    SongFight.org is a weekly song competition that’s been going since the early aughts. Each week you’re given a title. You make a song with that title, email it to the "fight master", who then posts all the songs to be voted on. The song with the most votes wins. There’s no prize but the warm satisfaction of a job well done.
    From roughly 2003 to 2005, I participated in SongFight every single week. I rarely won, but as a precursor to song a day, I found it was a great way to keep myself accountable, to keep writing songs. Since starting Song A Day, I occasionally go back and participate in a fight...
    20 min
  • I Undertook A Difficult Song Request
    Every once in a while, I'll put the call out on Twitter and ask people what they think I should write about. The suggestions are often about current events. Or animals. Today, I decided to go with a suggestion that's a bit more difficult to interpret.
    19 min
  • Climate News Is Depressing, Let's Make A Song
    In August of 2019, Iceland marked the loss of a glacier. 100 or so people, including the Prime Minsiter, walked up the mountain to hold a ceremony and install a plaque that reads ,
    “Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier.
    In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path.
    This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done
    Only you know if we did it.”
    I saw this bit of news go by and knew immediately that I wanted to write a song about it.
    21 min
  • Write Drunk, Edit Sober
    There’s a quote, most often attributed to Hemingway (though no one can find where he said it):
    WRITE DRUNK, EDIT SOBER. In this episode, we do some "sober editing".
    16 min

About As It Happens: Song A Day

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It's songwriting in real time!