Nick Cave

From the words and the thickets,
Come the ghosts of his victims,
'We love you!'
'Ah love you!'
This will not hurt a bit.

In a clap-board shack with a roof of tin,
Where the rain came down and leaked within,
A young mother frozen on a concrete floor,
With a bottle and a box and a cradle of straw.

Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite, it is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past. It is those dangerous, heart-stopping departures that catapult the artist beyond the limits of what he or she recognises as their known self. This is part of the authentic creative struggle that precedes the invention of a unique lyric of actual value; it is the breathless confrontation with one’s vulnerability, one’s perilousness, one’s smallness, pitted against a sense of sudden shocking discovery; it is the redemptive artistic act that stirs the heart of the listener, where the listener recognizes in the inner workings of the song their own blood, their own struggle, their own suffering.

Hit it! With words like Blood, Soldier and Mother...

King Ink strolls into town...
He sniffs around.

If this is heaven ahm bailin' out!

Numbin' the runt of reputation they call rat frame,
Top-E as a tourniquet,
A low tune whistles across his grave,
Forever the slave of his Six Strings.

O ah hear her walkin',
Walkin' barefoot 'cross the floor-boards,
All thru this lonesome night,
And ah hear her crying too.
Hot-tears come splashin' down,
Leaking thru the cracks,
Down upon my face, ah catch'em in my mouth!

I tried to kill it in my bed,
I gagged it with a pillow,
But awoke the nuns inside my head.

Do you want to know how to write a song? Song-writing is about counterpoint. Counterpoint is the key. Putting two disparate images beside each other and seeing which way the sparks fly. Like letting a small child in the same room as, I don't know, a Mongolian psychopath or something, and just sitting back and seeing what happens. Then you send in a clown, say, on a tricycle, and again, you wait, and you watch ... And if that doesn't do it... you shoot the clown.

Let there be no sadness, no sorrow,
Let there be no road too narrow,
There'll be a new day, and it's today,
For all of us.

Tupelo-o-o! Hey, Tupelo! You will reap just what you sow.

Pilgrim gets 1 hacked daughter,
And all we get are 40 hack reporters,
Uptown 100 skirts are bleeding,
And Mr. Evangilist says She's hit, ev'ry little bit.

God has matured. He is not the impulsive, bowelless being of the Testaments - the vehement glorymonger, with His bag of cheap carny tricks and his booming voice - the fiery huckster with his burning bushes and his wonder wands. Nowadays God knows what He wants and He knows who He wants.

The woods eats the woman and dumps her honey-body in the mud,
Her dress floats down the well and it assumes the shape of the body of a little girl,
Yeah, I recognize that girl,
She stumbled in some time last loneliness,
But I could not stand to touch her now,
My one and only onlyness.