Inspired by movies: Story behind the two latest songs

An Honest Ten Percent

This is a result of both a musical and lyrical rewrite of a song I wrote six months ago called "Deliver Arnica." This song has a chorus that borrows some chord progression ideas from Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." I just changed the order you hear the chords. The verses use a simpler I IV V chord progression with a jazzy tritone substitution turnaround. The melody in the verses was inspired by The Who's "Baba O'Riley" as it is almost all pentatonic major. The melody in the chorus is also Nirvana inspired. It starts with a phrase in the minor key, but alternates with a phrase that ends on the major third.

The lyrics for Arnica were not thought through too carefully, like a lot of my early songs (before I took the "writing lyrics to music" class at Berklee School of Music Online). No thought went in to the title; I was just looked around the room and saw the tube of arnica homeopathic pain relief gel, and 15 minutes later, the lyrics were done. It took me about 5 hours to write the music (I type with a touch pad and an on-screen keyboard) and another couple hours to mix it in GarageBand. Now, after taking that class, and reading Sheila Davis' lyric writing books, I put equal time into the music and the words.

When I got the song critique from TAXI, they suggested rewriting the lyrics, and add a prechorus and a bridge. Then in mid September I woke up thinking about the WWII POW movie "King Rat", and knew I had to write a song about it. I rented it from Netflix, and wrote down images and dialogue that affected me. The main character, an American corporal who runs the camp's black market, was asked how much he profited from a transaction he brokered. His reply, his tagline, "An Honest Ten Percent." I realized this phrase has the same syllabic stress as arnica:

de LIV er AR ni CA
an HON est TEN per CENT

I knew I had my title. I answered the who, what, when and where questions in the first verse:

Nineteen fourty five
Men barely alive
Japanese and barbwire and pain
Life in camp is cruel
Black market I rule
You eat bugs this king drinks champagne

The chorus and bridge came next. They comment the main event of the film:

Chorus:

An honest ten percent
Your hunger's keeping me fat
An honest ten percent
I'll trade your watch for a rat

Bridge:

Takes a cold heart to capitalize
Eating rat meat is rationalized

No one lies (about being lonely)

I wrote the lyrics first. The title is a line from the movie "From Here To Eternity"

The music borrows idea from Depeche Mode's "Never Let Me Down Again"