Sweet Dreams

I am in the middle of many projects. All of which are in various degrees of completion. Some are just ideas that have yet to become any sort of tangible thing. Others are part of bigger projects (getting my house ready to sell). I'm awful at completing tasks. I'm great at starting them and bringing them to a point of some percentage of completion, but once the end is in sight, I tend to find some reason to start something else. Right now, in fact, I have put painters tape on about 90% of the back door window. The other day, I put two coats of paint on my front door. It needs one more. Which task should I do? Paint the front door? Continue working on the back door?

Earlier last month, I got working on revamping my website. It was a task I had wanted to do for about a year. I have a good portion of it completed. Right now, I just need to get some new photos and a photo slideshow/viewer and the site should be done. I'm happy with how it has turned out.

I also had an opportunity to do some new home recordings for the site. Two of the recordings are new songs. I thought I'd write about one of them as I procrastinate from choosing a painting task to work on...

Sweet Dreams is the first song that I have written in quite a long time. Don't get me wrong, I have been writing lyrics here and there, but nothing has come to the level of completion that Sweet Dreams has.

When I write song, I often get asked the question: What's it about?

Truth is, most songs are necessarily "about" a specific thing. I prefer to answer the question by saying what the song is inspired by and what happened in the writing process that has gotten it to where it is now.

Sweet Dreams was inspired by a variety of things. Firstly, I heard a song recently (and I don't remember what the song was) that had really simplistic lyrics. There wasn't any metaphor driving the song. I decided this might be a nice change up in my writing: to write more simplistically than I typically strive to do. This thought occurred to me about the time that I had met and interesting young woman that put off an amazing vibe. It was the kind of vibe that draws you in when you are near to it and when you have to step away from it, it stays with you. One night, I was falling asleep with a smile on my face as thought about the young woman and her vibe. Somewhere (not really sure where), a melody hit me. I found myself singing in my head the line, "You bring me sweet dreams, as I'm drifting off to sleep." Somehow, I fell asleep without writing anything down. When I awoke, the melody and the line were still in my head. I rearranged the line a little bit and wrote what became the chorus while I was in the shower that morning before going to work. The verses came to throughout the day and I wrote them down, scratched them out, and rewrote them multiple times in my notebook.

So, what is the song about? Essentially, it's about a person who has great vibes that you make you smile when you are going to sleep. Simple.

Here are the lyrics, as they currently stand, to Sweet Dreams:

I get lost inside my mind
and it happens all the time.
I would like to make you mine.
Hold you tight every night

You bring me
sweet dreams, like a breeze off of the sea.
Stay with me when I'm drifting off to sleep.
I believe when I'm locked you are the key.
You bring me sweet dreams.

When I wake I am astray.
And it happens every day.
At night, I'm nice and safe.
Squared away in your embrace.

You bring me
sweet dreams, like a breeze off of the sea.
Stay with me when I'm drifting off to sleep.
I believe when I'm locked you are the key.
You bring me sweet dreams.


There are harmonica riffs played during the breaks. It's in Am. The recording is on the cloud player at jamesfrederick.net.

Give it a listen!

I'm sure I'll be playing it out quite a bit.

Right. I think I'll go paint that front door now...