tournament Golden Hit: Season 2 📀 Congratulations Hug! 🏆

[fountain]

Just now, Jackson said:

you’re asking for 10 more posts? in this economy? hm what’s everyone having for dinner? 

Woke up to burger and curly fries from my boyfriend then remembered I hadn’t scored yet so read and scored the last few entries in between bites so results wouldn’t be delayed 

[Aurora]

 

 

At #4, it's a tie! For real this time. Despite our best efforts to prevent these, they appear to keep ruling the results. One might say, welcome...

 

 

? @beatinglikeadrum with a score of 8.313 for “The King”. ?
 ? @Hug with a score of 8.313 for “Welcome to the Club”. ?

Congratulations to you both! This is a huge win for you beatinglikeadrum, this song was a tremendous triumph and I'm so happy to see you in Top 5!
As for you Hug, I hope this settles the doubt once and for all that you're an amazing writer with great skill. Coming for Augie's tied wig tho, I fear!

[Remmy]

heyyyy

[Aurora]

Y'all not reaching page 37 already... the flop ratings. Oh well! Congrats to the Top 3 @hurricane326@Remmy@worldwide angel 

[fountain]

Congrats !

[Remmy]

my 2nd top 3 oh wow

[Aurora]

 

 

At #3, earning themselves a Bronze Hit Token is someone who is no stranger to Golden Hit's Top 3. In fact, this is their second consecutive #3 hit...

 

 

? @worldwide angel with a score of 8.375 for “Sweet Revival”. ?

Serving consistency! Congratulations on another smash hit, you've definitely proven yourself as one to watch early on. Good luck next round!

[Remmy]

congrats

[fountain]

4 minutes ago, Aurora said:

 

Y'all not reaching page 37 already... the flop ratings.

 

Not when these are the biggest so far… first two rounds results had me serving this

 

[fountain]

Congrats @worldwide angel 

[Aurora]

 

 

Now for the big one, the announcement of the #1 and #2 writers for Round 3's Deciduous challenge.

I'm not going to add any unnecessary limbs to this announcement, let's just cut to the chase.

Both incredibly personal, family-based songs, however only one can soar above the canopy and claim #1...

 

 

? @hurricane326 with a score of 9.313 for “Love Under a Blue Tarp”. ?

Congratulations on your second #1 smash hit of the season! Serving Jackson's GH1 a bit with the 1-2-1 STOMP out of the gate.

This was an incredibly moving piece and it's no wonder you've managed to top the charts again. Enjoy your highest score in GH!
 

 ? @Remmy with a score of 8.918 for “Family Tree”. ?

This really was another "Paper Airplane Crashes" moment, and although the score might not be quite as high, the #2 peak is better!
Thank you for submitting such a wonderful, personal submission. I'm glad that even with your limited availability, you could serve like this.

[Remmy]

 

and well done hurricane  you always eat us all up

[Hug]

For those who are curious: hurricane's average is nearly 0.7 higher than the second place contestant. He's only competing with himself at this point!

[Augmented]

@hurricane326 has already won this season methinks 

[Hug]

And yes I AM on my PH9 obsessed with numbers era. SO WHAT.

[Achilles.]

Smash top 2 we love to see it for them  

[Legend E]

REMMY CONGRATS

 

congrats to the rest of the top 3 too  

 

Happy to have another top 10 too!

[Aurora]

 

 

Rank	Writer	Song Title	Score
1	@hurricane326	“Love Under a Blue Tarp”	9.313
2	@Remmy	“Family Tree”	8.918
3	@worldwide angel	“Sweet Revival”	8.375
4	@beatinglikeadrum	“The King”	8.313
	@Hug	“Welcome to the Club”
6	@Achilles.	“All Around the Christmas Tree”	8.188
7	@Augmented	“Nature’s Law”	8.105
8	@Euterpe	“God-given”	8
9	@JoeAg	“Conifers Smile On”	7.938
10	@Legend E	“Sycamore”	7.813
11	@XO_Life	“Old Oak Tree”	7.708
12	@Gavin.	“Roots Keep Me Here”	7.25
13	@Julia Fox	“Coconut Tree”	6.313
14	@Allday	“Red”	6.063

 

[Aurora]

Golden Links updated with everything so far—will add fountain's R3 reviews once posted, and will work on Golden Hit Tokens tomorrow most likely!

[fountain]

congrats @Remmy !! #2 cause ur the ****!! ??

[fountain]

And of course congrats to @hurricane326 too, wow, the stompation continues. Absolutely taking the competition by storm (literally!) 

[fountain]

Will have my afterparty reviews in the next couple days, revealing my individual scores like I promised earlier  I‘ll say, I gave everybody a score that is higher than their final score - as usual I Paula’d - so that’s fun!

[Gavin.]

Congratulations everyone!
 

was a hardish challenge but that’s awesome some of y’all didn’t go too overly obvious like my flopping ass

 

The judges provide valuable feedback tho so not too upset I’m in my flop round. Now to not wait till last minute and try to come back from this! 

[worldwide angel]

53 minutes ago, Aurora said:

 

 

At #3, earning themselves a Bronze Hit Token is someone who is no stranger to Golden Hit's Top 3. In fact, this is their second consecutive #3 hit...

 

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? @worldwide angel with a score of 8.375 for “Sweet Revival”. ?

Serving consistency! Congratulations on another smash hit, you've definitely proven yourself as one to watch early on. Good luck next round!

OMG   thank you all so much

[worldwide angel]

21 hours ago, Jackson said:

I apologize in advance for my attempted tree puns. My last few reviews will come in the morning – thanks for being patient this round!

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@hurricane326 – Love Under a Blue Tarp
One thing I love about your writing is how the lyrics tell a complete story. Often, with other writers, I have to read the “other information” section to fully grasp what their song’s about, but I felt like you effectively portrayed exactly what you were writing without me even needing the additional information section. I love that you wrote about the way children experience life as bigger and grander than it is in reality – it’s something I think about a lot and something I wrote about in one of my PH10 songs. The way you then twisted that to juxtapose against adults dealing with a heavier reality is really interesting. Your lyrics display a childlike sense of innocence really well, but there’s also a darker, heavier component that makes each side pop really well. From a challenge standpoint, I think you implemented the tree theme quite well without it feeling burdensome. Incorporating the theme through descriptive phrases like “some people branched out but others held hope” and “they bend and sway until they break” is a smart way to nod towards the brief in a way that Achilles has done in prior challenges. I also like that you incorporated the theme both metaphorically and literally. Since your song didn’t have a formal chorus, this worked well to tie sections of the song together without needing to so structurally. I actually think this still sounds very song-like despite the lack of a chorus. If I had any nitpicks, I would say that I don’t fully understand “How she had to stop with the pleas” – based on the lyrics and your additional information, it seems this was the point where her pleas peaked. Let me know if I’m missing something there. I’d have to say this is my favorite song from you so far this season. You incorporated the theme well and wrote about a very personal and sensitive subject with an incredible amount of care.

 

@Hug – Welcome to the Club
Regardless of what you’re writing about or how I feel about it, I always look forward to reading your entries. Your technical mastery of songwriting is well established, but there’s always an inherent sweetness to your lyrics and an emotional bend to them. Even though the things you write about are rarely personal, I can feel traces of your own feelings in each song. This season, I think you were in pursuit of the original for a few rounds, and I think that made your writing unusually cerebral for a bit, and I missed out on some of that traditional Hug sweetness and emotion. I think some of that came back this round, and I’m happy to see it. While trying something new at this stage of your songwriting career is never a bad thing, I think you should make sure that you’re enjoying writing and writing something you connect with. Someone may tell you that your storyline wasn’t original enough, but I think this song had a very human storyline, and humans tend to go through the same cycles of love and loss and holding memories in a rosy state of perfection that may have never existed, so I think your song has a very “real” feeling to it. I don’t necessarily interpret your first verse as a literal retelling of events, but more a retrospective view of how someone might remember their childhood in all its perfection. You write about the excitement of playing in a treehouse with a friend, of etching “welcome to the club” on a sign, but not about the process of building the treehouse or the perhaps mundane days after it was built. Later, you write about the moment your branches “split apart”. We tend to remember the most emotional parts of life, so for me this adds to the realness of the story. All this to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the “treehouse” concept, your storyline, and everything that came with it. Concept aside, one could even argue that the entire concept is just a metaphor for the friendships we build as children, the crushes we never admit, and the way people drift apart as we advance into adulthood, often more to the detriment of one party than the other. My favorite line is “trees can be replanted, but memories can’t be replaced”. My only complaint would be that a few lines felt awkwardly worded to fit your meter and rhyme scheme (“zen” in the first chorus, “all the merrier that those were me and you”, “when my reason to was lost”). Perhaps the reason for this review is me trying to convince you that you’re a much better songwriter than you sometimes give yourself credit for. You’ve mentioned looking up to other writers as inspiration of what you want your writing to be, but I think there’s writers that read your work and aspire to be at your level. I don’t think you’re capable of writing a “bad” song – at the very least all the basic songwriting elements will be there. At best, you have something like this song – wistful, mildly sweet, thoughtful, and universally relatable.

 

@XO_Life – Old Oak Tree
“Starts with a moan” has to be a new one for me. Using seasons as a way to show progression in a story is a pretty old poetic trick, and one that I’ve used before, but it’s one that I don’t mind seeing pop up, especially in a “deciduous” challenge. The image of a firefly filled night fading into red and brown decaying leaves definitely gives me the transition from Taylor’s Speak Now to Red eras, but I also get some Same Trailer Different Park era Kacey from the second verse. Despite the country inspired veneer, I still get a lot of your trademark pop sensibilities here. “Bliss” often feels like a forced rhyme when paired with “kiss”, but I think the rhyme’s catchy enough here that you pull it off. The fact that you ventured a little further from the bubblegum pop I’ve seen from you in the past played to your strength this round, because you retained the catchiness of your pop style while introducing some storytelling elements. I did think the progression of the story was a bit abrupt – you went right from describing permanent green love to “But now all is on the ground”. I think you could have fixed this by omitting the first chorus and using the second verse as a transition – delaying the chorus would have also built some tension and made the blunt “now all is on the ground” feel more rewarding and less jarring as a reader. I’d also encourage you to think of new ways to describe your setting. Instead of directly saying the words “green”, “red”, and “brown” you could describe them in a way that’s slightly more engaging. Regardless, my favorite line here was “broken brown leafs, I hear their cracks and my heart fills with grief” – the literal image of decaying leaves alongside the metaphorical image of a heart cracking felt like a high point for the song. The way you describe oak trees as “permanently” green despite clearly being deciduous confused me a bit at first, but I think you pull it off with your ending line “oh just knowing autumn will never leave” – this hints that the protagonist naively thinks the current season will last forever, but the reader knows the tree will find spring again someday and leaves them with a sense of hope without ever needing to say it. You’ve already shown a tremendous amount of growth and versatility in this tournament, so I’m excited to see what you surprise us with next week.

 

@Julia Fox – Coconut Tree
I was considering writing a song this week that fit this week’s challenge while also working for Diana Diamond, and the concept I came up with was writing a summery bop about a palm tree – it looks like you read my mind! Something intriguing I learned after spending a week in Costa Rica this year is that palm and banana trees aren’t biologically true “trees”, and some don’t consider them trees at all because they don’t have multiple terminal limbs. To those people, I say **** off because who are you as a scientist to say what is and isn’t a tree? Anyway, I can see, as you implied in your additional information section, that this song was less inspired than other entries, but it’s still a pretty solid pop offering. I actually appreciate that you went in a new direction here – stating things pretty plainly and describing them in colorful, sometimes smutty ways. I think this type of song is pretty easy to write because, as I’ve said in other reviews, shock is the easiest emotion to manufacture. At the same time, it can be incredibly difficult to find the line between clever and lewd. While “seed me with your succulent juice” was an effective double entendre, “nut in me, feed me in” was perhaps a bit too direct. The entire song follows that theme of alternating between clever lines, like “your leaves dance when they see me/maybe they could made a beautiful dress/and then maybe you could undress me” and the more grotesque “your coconuts incredibly yield/that means more milk for me, yummy!”. For what you describe as an uninspired song, I think the clever lines actually outnumber the awkward ones, so I’m glad you submitted something. Even if I winced a bit at “make my eyes go white-y”, I cackled at “and I like tall boys like you, coconut/cause they have bigger (laughs sensually)” (not to mention this felt like a necessary and effective use of parentheticals). This surely won’t go down as one of your greatest hits, but I think it provides some necessary fun and color to your discography, so I’m glad I got to read it, and writing something this fun and summery was a less popular option this round, so it provided some necessary re-leaf

 

@Euterpe – God-given
Something I like about a challenge so broad as “write a song about trees” is that you get a wide array of songs, ranging from being metaphorically about trees, to writing about Christmas trees, to literally writing a song from the perspective as a tree. I don’t think any interpretation is correct or incorrect, and I appreciate seeing all perspectives. This reads as the antithesis to the song fountain posted this week – where his song is about an alien longing for a world with trees, your song is about a tree coming to terms with its humanity, or lack thereof. Considering your song isn’t from a human’s perspective, it’s interesting that it explores the concept of humanity more than any other this round. Whether intended or not, I think one could also take this more metaphorically as a song about feeling different and finding peace in differences. From this perspective, I found the second half of your song more compelling than the first. While the first half of the story describes the tree, it only touches on the comparison between itself and its onlookers. I like that in the bridge you reference the tree’s doubts and troubles, but show its acceptance of its place in nature. I want to highlight one particular part of your song – where you say “I grow pine needles and cones…but like a parent’s welcoming nest, the children will not be disowned”. For me, this was the most descriptive part of your song, and a good example of using imagery to draw emotion. In other places in your song, you either describe the tree in a literal way that builds the setting of the song but doesn’t contribute emotionally, or describe flat-out how the tree feels. I think you could have combined both in more places, using strong descriptive phrases to convey emotion without needing to explicitly mention the emotions your character feels. You clearly have a strong grasp of songwriting structure and all the associated basics, so I’d love to see you “branch” out and include more descriptive, emotional details in your lyrics to further strengthen your songs.

 

@Allday – Red
I don’t think you needed to worry about not knowing much about trees. Your approach of using a tree as both the setting of your song and a metaphor through the colors of its leaves was smart and showed a good understanding of the challenge. I have a maple tree right outside my house that turns scarlet red in autumn, so the imagery here really connected with me. This song was, fittingly, quite evocative of Taylor’s Red era, not just in the obvious name of the song, but also the fall imagery, the heightened emotion and association with color, and the hormone-driven adolescent love story. The lyrics were saturated with references to the titular color, but I would have loved to see more variety in your language. I liked when you mentioned “auburn thoughts”, but the overuse of the word “red” otherwise felt very one note. You could have described your imagery in other ways, or used other synonyms for the color rather than using the word “red” three times in the chorus alone. There were also a few words that felt out of place in the lyrics. I didn’t know what “polonaise” or “nocturne” meant before reading your song, and after googling those words I’m still not sure they fit in their respective lines. I’m also guessing “wearwear” is a typo for underwear, or maybe just an Aussie slang I’m not aware of? As for the rap feature – it looks like you addressed this challenge and the next all in one song! I liked the change of tone and structure, but lyrically I don’t think it added anything to the story. This could have been a good opportunity to introduce a new perspective or emotion to the lyrics. Still, you understood the challenge well, and I appreciate that you used the tree theme both literally and metaphorically.

 

@worldwide angel – Sweet Revival
I’m glad you switched up your structure a bit this week – while the pre-chorus and chorus are still quite short, the longer line lengths in the verse give your lyrics a bit more breathing room and allow you to express thought more poetically. Using winter as a metaphor for death and spring as a metaphor for rebirth are hardly new concepts in songwriting/poetry, but I think you added enough humanity and personal touches to make this a fresh take on the narrative. In the first verse, I thought it was an interesting choice to add a second character (“feels like his shivering limbs, born from nowhere, slowly strangles me”) that didn’t have any additional presence in the song. My guess is that you’re personifying death, but just doing this once in the song felt confusing to me. Additionally, using “shivering limbs” as a negatively connotated reference to trees while using more mellow, personal references later in the song (“drops of gorgeous browns, luscious reds, and pearly yellows” or “deep in my rings/rest in my roots”) felt inconsistent. I absolutely loved those more vivid tree references, which just made that first one feel out of place. My only other complaint would be that “these waves of wind around me/whirl around me” in the chorus was unnecessarily repetitive.  Despite this, don’t think I didn’t enjoy the rest of the song, as I really only had problems with those few lines. You do a great job of talking about a sensitive subject without directly saying what you’re talking about. It’s pretty clear you’re writing about death in lines like “I know my moment approaches silently” and “there’s something waiting/on the other side for me”, but you don’t have to explicitly tell the reader. You make the fatal sound almost serene, which, as you allude to in your other information section, as you should – nature goes through cycles of death and birth in a beautiful way. I’m glad you’re able to harness that beauty and turn it into an effective piece of art.

 

@beatinglikeadrum – The King
This doesn’t severely impact my judging, and I typically wouldn’t comment on it, but there did appear to be a significant amount of small spelling and grammar errors here that were a bit distracting. Whether it’s that you didn’t read the lyrics back or just a language difference, it could be worth it to run your song through a free grammar checker online or send to another contestant. With that out of the way, I think you’ve done a great job of listening to our feedback throughout the weeks and made gradual improvements with each entry. Where your last entry had some metaphors that didn’t quite connect for me, everything here seemed intentional and well thought out semantically. I liked that you wove in references to trees throughout the song in Nimue’s hair, bark full of dreams, and references to fertile soil. Had I not known this round was about trees, I may not have picked up on those references, but they helped ground your imagery and still made enough appearances in the song to fit the brief. I think you’ve developed a great ability to convey a sense of color and vibrancy in your lyrics that effectively paints a setting and immerses the reader directly in your lyrics. At times, your lines become quite wordy in a way that walks the line between songwriting and poetry, and your fairly loose rhyme scheme contributes to that feeling as well. I think this will lend well to the next challenge, where you’ll have unfettered access to unusual line lengths. Otherwise, I would encourage you to take a risk and attempt to package your beautiful, emotional imagery into a more lyrical package, sticking to similar line lengths, matching verse structures, and committing to a rhyme scheme. Still, I’d like to comment on a few lines here that a really enjoyed, because there were a lot. “My roots, they once touched Mother Nature’s heart/Now she can only hear my tears, she can only see my cry” was my favorite couplet, and I also loved “Son of the fertile soil and rainny skies, King Of Trees needs to die/I AM no longer needed by the human kind”. The next challenge seems tailor made to your style, so I encourage you to go all out, experiment with song structure, and deliver your best song yet.

 

@Legend E – Sycamore
Not your other information section being twice as long as your song . I do read the additional information as a way to understand writers’ thought processes better and see if there were any obvious things I missed, but I felt like there were a few lyrics that never would have clicked had I not read through the other information. The crown lyric wouldn’t have struck me as a crown of leaves since there weren’t any other references to trees in the chorus, and I was left wondering what this could be a reference to as I was reading through your lyrics. I think you could have more directly alluded to the tree’s leaves as a metaphorical crown or included other tree related imagery in the chorus to make that connection stronger. Your song was on the shorter side, which I don’t have a problem with, but there I was left wanting additional detail which made the song seem unfinished rather than short. Of what was present, there was no shortage of well thought out lines. There was a mature sense of romance in the warmth/coldness line. I love that there were feelings of danger and rebellion set against the overall romantic feel of the song that fit perfectly with the Adam & Eve theme. The third line of the second verse was beautifully sweet, as well as the entire third verse/outro. I think this section especially should have been expanded, as it was the most compelling to me. The way you hint at something tender and sensual producing life, yet not being able to tell the stories to your offspring, leading to the inside of me/outside of me was genius – so how dare you end the song two lines later? In my mind I imagine two little kids outside swinging on the Sycamore tree, or the family pondering the cycle of life as autumn leaves fall off the tree. Something like this could have been a cool bridge before ending on a slightly altered chorus. I don’t want to write your song for you, but for me there’s a difference between ending a song intentionally on an unresolved note and a verse that’s begging to be written. I would say there was little you did wrong this round, but there’s also a lot more you could have done. And while it would have been nearly impossible to match the highs of last round, this was still another great entry from you.

 

@Augmented – Nature's Law 

I’m going to start my review where you probably don’t want me to and attempt to analyze your discontent with your writing this season. So far, you’ve submitted three pretty diverse songs, and I’ve personally quite enjoyed two of them. Your writing definitely isn’t bad this season, and I’d even say I’ve seen some growth from you compared to last season. I think trying to decipher exactly why you’re not happy with your writing may be the key to writing something both you and the judges love. Perhaps you’re trying to write the perfect song and forgetting to write something you enjoy, or perhaps you’re just unhappy with your style and trying out new techniques to see what fits. If that’s the case, I’d encourage you to take next week as an opportunity to really experiment with structure and rhyming since you won’t be confined to the same rules as typical rounds for a spoken word song. And above all, I implore you to write about something that bring you joy, because regardless of how I feel about a song it brings me some pain to see you doing something that isn’t bringing you much satisfaction. 

 

As for your song itself, I think you created something special here. You were hardly the only person to write about changing seasons this round, as is to be expected in a round about trees, but I think you may have done it in the most beautiful, poetic, thought-provoking way. Despite your lyrics being fairly abstract here, there don’t appear to be any major underlying meanings, leaving your descriptive imagery and metaphors to do all the work – and they’ve done a phenomenal job. I wish I could highlight examples, but just know that your verses are practically a masterclass in descriptive songwriting. The song definitely could have been strengthened through additional underlying themes. I could see the bridge being about  a forest that doesn’t come back to life after winter, and connecting its death after millennia of life to climate change or human intervention. Conversely, you could have personified the forest and commented on some aspect of humanity. As it is, your song’s a beautiful piece of poetry, and with an additional layer it could have lyrics as profound as they are poetically striking. 

 

@JoeAg – Conifers Smile On
It seems this song is a return to form for you. For me, that means there’s a lot of genius lines here, but also a few confounding ones. Everything you write seems well thought out and full of meaning, but that meaning doesn’t always translate to the reader. Specifically, I’m referring to “My confrontations with the pines seem insignificant now/But fortunately those mighty trees will rescue me later in life”. I’m sure this line has plenty of purpose that you could explain to me, but in the context of the song I’m left perplexed even after a few reads through. I’m also a bit confused at the “roots feel you within seconds” line that appears a couple times in the song. I’m not sure if this is a reference to literal conifer roots feeling the characters walk (or hookup) through the forest, or if it’s meant to be a metaphorical reference to the narrator. Regardless, it didn’t connect for me. In the first verse specifically, there were also a couple quick potential fixes I wanted to call out. The verb tenses in the first two lines are inconsistent (“cascading” would have worked better) and the repeated use of “rough” was distracting. Otherwise, I loved your chosen theme – it’s something that a lot of people can relate to and you described it creatively and emotionally. Making the chorus simpler and catchier was a good choice – it contrasted well against the wordier verses. I love the image of rough pine needles and icy scowls vs a blessed, softened shelter. I think this describes both the rough, natural setting and the jagged nature of a hookup while also acknowledging the softness and beauty that come with both. As always, you do a great job of adding small details that make a story believable (Baby, be quiet, I hold the rocks to let you pass/But we’re only dots from the views of our conifers). I also loved the way you ended your song – “Cool, crisp breeze/You, me, and the trees”. I think this encapsulated everything I described above – the harshness and softness of your setting and storyline and the poetic yet catchy lyrics. You do a great job of building a world in your songs, even if I don’t feel like the reader is completely let inside. 

 

@Achilles. – All Around the Christmas Tree
Writing a song about Christmas was a bold choice, but I’m happy you chose to do it. I’ve wanted for there to be a Christmas round for a while because I think there’s a lot of emotions around the holiday, both positive and negative, that people tend to forget about at other times of the year. I think you captured those emotions well here. There are aspects of this that feel more juvenile and cheesy like a traditional Christmas song (“there are presents all around the Christmas tree/there are lots for you and lots for me”), but I think they match well to the implied age of the narrator. I’m glad that you showed a few different glimpses at ages in your life rather than skipping straight from the first to third verse, as the progression felt more natural this way. The third verse was especially powerful, as I’m sure it represents how a lot of young adults feel around the holidays. Many of us have moved far away from family, yet we still feel some obligation to celebrate and a longing to feel the same pure joy we felt at Christmas as a kid. When we stop believing in God or family, it can be hard to find a reason to celebrate. I especially like the line that you mentioned – “There are ghost all around the Christmas tree/And it’s for them, these rituals I keep”. I understood the “ghosts” to be departed or absent family members, but (and this is just an observation, not a criticism) I wouldn’t have made the inherited ornament/decoration connection had you not mentioned it in your additional information. If I were to offer one small criticism, “lay blame” felt a bit forced in the second verse. I really liked where you ended the song. Despite the rest of the third verse being quite depressing, you hint at there being hope in the future (a possible sequel in 10 years I hope?). There’s a lot of emotions here – happiness, anxiety, bitterness, sadness, and optimism – and you do a great job of expressing them all. For me, this was a much stronger entry than last week’s.

 

@Remmy – Family Tree
OK so – this is spectacular. I’m going to get the things I didn’t like out of the way, because there weren’t many. “What started as a flame/Now’s a forest fire from a cigarette” doesn’t make sense, considering you say it started as a flame and now it started as a cigarette? Is the cigarette a reference to the sibling’s smoking problem or something? “Blood on the knife after I did the dishes” also seemed unnecessary, and the bridge could have probably ended before that line. Otherwise, whew, I’m a Remmy stan this round. I have a friend who’s going through this exact thing right now, so I can picture exactly how the character feels. I’m not sure if this is a personal song, but it FEELS personal, so regardless you’ve done a great job at creating a believable story. Little details like “Our Nintendo days” make the story seem real. The opening couplet was cutting and direct, and immersed me immediately in the storyline. Even your metaphors felt hard hitting. I especially loved “You jumped off the branch, went for the coast/Escaped the nest, way later than most”. In the second verse, “Maybe you could related, just needed dead weight” was another highlight. The bridge was a beautiful example of poppy, lyrical songwriting that still felt poetic. The wordplay here reminded me a bit of country music. It’s also catchy enough that it could have worked as a chorus. The final couplet had a strong sense of resolve and defiance. In all, you had a strong storyline, effective metaphors, and beautiful personal details. This is definitely a round highlight for me.

 

@Gavin. – Roots Keep Me Here
Considering trees and roots are a well-established symbol for stability, I’m surprised more people didn’t take this route this round. Despite this I wish your concept was more fully realized. As it stands, I can tell your song is about a sense of feeling stuck, but that’s about it. I could see this being a song about being stuck in a hometown, or a song about being stuck in a relationship, or even a song about being stuck in a bad mental state. I would have loved to see one of those themes fleshed out. Since your verses were fairly short, you could have used the extra space to add in personal details to deepen the concept. Your songwriting here was good. Structurally, you nailed all the elements of a great song. Lyrically, you also effectively conveyed a sense of emotion and provided some depth through your metaphors. In other ways, this song felt like a summary of every other song this round. You hit a lot of the same metaphors as other writers through referencing seasons, carving words into bark, and having deep roots. Since you didn’t delve deeper into any specific theme, I don’t think you provided anything new to those concepts that hasn’t already been said a thousand times before in songwriting. I really think it simply comes down to your overall concept – had you included more personal detail or told a deeper story, you would have naturally taken the tree theme further. None of this says anything about your ability – you obviously have a good grasp on how to write a good song, and this song WAS good. Had your concept been more fully realized, I think it could have been even better.
 

 

tysm