I often wondered how people write songs - readers may say ’tis little enough is bothering you!

Too true, but nevertheless the gift of being able to put words together and then marry them to music and come up with a ‘finished product’ that’s pleasant, enjoyable- maybe even informative, well, that bates Banagher.

I dabbled in poetry myself now and then in my younger days, but my verses can be rhyming or maybe not. The first and third line might have a last word that sounds the same, then the second and fourth lines and so on until the poem is completed.

I never really mastered the trade of being a poet. I could still ‘compose’ a few lines to suit most occasions but wouldn’t have the audacity or temerity to call it poetry!

When I think of some of the great combinations like Rogers and Hammerstein, Lennon and McCartney, Burt Bacharach and Hall David, and the Gibbs Brothers (Bee Gees), I am truly in awe of their undoubted talent.

What about ‘Arnold and St John’, with apologies to the memory of the late great songster Pete St John?

A few years back, I took the liberty of basing a ‘composition’ of my own on Peter Mooney’s (his real name) Fields Of Athenry. I think they call it plagiarism when one person kind of bases one song on a previously written one. My Fields Of Bartlemy was anything but original but it included such magnificent agricultural gems as ‘ The cows they have mastitis, the bull he has phlebitis / tis so lonely round the Fields of Bartlemy’.

Safe to say it never made to No.1, or any other number either!

My pathetic efforts at songwriting aren’t a cause of any major distress to me. No, but they have given me a huge admiration for those who pen never-to-be-forgotten songs and tunes.

In truth, I’ve thought a lot about songs, singers, and songwriters over the last few days, and........

© Evening Echo