Speedbumps – A Song of Tall Tales

We’re kicking off this week’s additions to the Bulmash Music playlist at YouTube with a song called “Speed.

One part of my creative process is just to let words pop into my head and see which one sparks an idea. I don’t remember how “Speedbumps” made its way to the front of my mind, but when it did, I thought “this is a perfect song about someone trying to get home to their loved one, but encountering delays.”

When I got down to fleshing it out, making many of the delays sound like tall tales (such as getting kidnapped by pirates) just felt right. And since the last two songs had a male singer, I thought this could be a fun “girl group” song. As always, it took a number of tries to refine the lyrics and guidance at Suno (referral link), but this is more than me just trying to generate a bunch of songs.

Every song has to pass at least three tests…
1: Is it easy to sing along to in the car?
2: Does it hit the right musical tone for the story the song is telling?
2: Can I listen to it 4 times in a row without starting to hate it?

I usually don’t stop until I have 2-4 candidates that passed all tests, then I let them sit overnight and pick which one won the next day. So know this not only passes all those tests, but it beat out two other versions that did also. An example of this is the song “Jagged Shelter”. The slow, painful version was the winner, but the peppier “EuroCamp” remix was too good to let go.

Hope you enjoy “Speedbumps”.

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