SeanPaulMurphyVille: August 2024

Friday, August 30, 2024

HE SAID SHE SAID released!

My new album He Said She Said has just been released. It is available streaming everywhere.

My last two albums, Tales of Love and Death and Many Sides of Love, were simply collections of songs. This album is more concept driven, like my first two albums The Elusive Farm Girl and Breakup City. This album is a series of mini song suites, each about a different significant relationship in my life in chronological order. The biggest difference between this album and the previous ones is that I attempt to incorporate the words and thoughts of my former girlfriends into the narrative.

I've always been a pack rat. If you wrote me something, I can pretty much guarantee I have it stored somewhere around this house. A number of songs on this album were inspired by something one of my former girlfriends wrote or said to me. That's why I called the album He Said She Said. Don't worry. I don't let myself off too easy. My heart gets broken quite a few times over the course of this album, but it has a happy ending with me meeting my wife and, supposedly, putting the past behind me.

This is my most personal album to date. I don't know how anyone else will respond to it, but it chokes me up in places. Not the sad moments. I relived them far too often already. It's the happy memories that get to me. They make me remember what I lost....

Then again, if I didn't lose what I had, would I have gained what I have?

Here's the song list:

1). CELEBRATE US. This song was based on a letter my first girlfriend Kathy sent me from college on our third anniversary. We were very happy as a couple at the time. There's a lot of joy in this song.

2). 156 MILES TO YOU. This is an answering song to Celebrate Us. Kathy was the subject of my second album Breakup City. That album was very bleak. I don't think it expressed anything positive about our relationship. I believe this song captures some of the joy and excitement I felt during our time together.

3). YOU HOLD THE KEY. When I first told Kathy I loved her, she wasn't prepared to reciprocate. She said she only wanted to say those words to her husband. However, a few days later, she sent me a card which I encapsulated in the chorus of this song. The rest of the song is drawn from things she wrote to me when she went away to college leading up to our breakup. I had already released this song on YouTube and it proved to be one of my most popular ones.

4). TIME CAN'T TAKE IT AWAY. This is my answering song to the our breakup. I recognized that Kathy's feelings had changed, but that didn't affect how I felt about our time together. I still look back on our relationship fondly. She changed my life, and she was there when I needed her most.

5). MOUNTAINTOP. This song is based on one of the first poems I wrote to my elusive farm girl. Before we met, we spent a long time getting to know each other through emails, instant messages and phone calls. Things seemed to be going so well that I feared we had nowhere to go but down....

6). BEFORE THE MOON GOES DOWN. The chorus of this song is based on the personal ad my elusive farm girl posted on America Online that initially attracted my attention. The verses capture her perspective on our relationship based on her emails. This is one of my favorite songs.

7). THE WHITE KNIGHT. This song is my retrospective look back at my relationship with the elusive farm girl. This was my woman whisperer phase, where I believed I could solve any woman's emotional problems with a direct application of love. I was wrong, of course, but I don't regret trying! At the very least, I ended up with a wonderful and wise friend.

8). OUR SECRET LOVE. During one of my long breaks with the farm girl, I met a sweet, flirtatious girl online who I will call Tammy. There was only one problem with our relationship: Tammy was married. I still thought it was emotionally safe to flirt with her. Afterall, I lived in Maryland and she lived in Florida. What was the chance we'd get involved? I didn't think we'd fall in love, but that's where we found ourselves. This song was inspired by an email she sent me as we considered our dilemma.

9). ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT. This song was not written specifically about Tammy, but I feel it captures the lustful yearnings she inspired in me. I was going to write a song about her lustful thoughts toward me, but I couldn't figure out how to capture them in a song without being too explicit.

10). WINDSWEPT MEMORIES. This was the decisive moment in my relationship with Tammy. She flew to Baltimore so I could take her to Ocean City for a wintery weekend vacation. This song was drawn from an email revealing her expectations and other emails about the actual aftermath. Would we cross the line? Listen and find out.

11). A FRIEND, YES FOREVER. This song was based on the last poem I wrote Tammy before we finally drifted apart after she met the lucky man who would become her second husband. Fortunately, thanks to social media, our friendship has been renewed. She has always been a very kind and sweet woman to me. I will always be grateful for the moral support she gave me when my sister Laura died, and the support she gave me recently when my granddaughter Emma died. God bless you, Tammy.

12). THE FRIDAY NIGHT SWING DANCE. Finally, after all the heartbreak, a happy ending. This song describes how I met my wife Deborah at the Friday Night Swing Dance at the Tall Cedars Hall. What a great night!

13). I'M HERE TO STAY. At first, my wife wanted to be friends only, but, as she was leaving the car after our first date, I asked her to stay for a second so I could give her a kiss. After that kiss, there was no more talking about being friends. I sang this song to my wife at our wedding.

14). FADED VERSE. The lyrics to this song tell the whole story. I found a poem I wrote to my first girlfriend in one of my college notebooks. I originally wanted to turn the poem into a song, but the theme was inconsistent and the sentiment was too maudlin. Therefore, I only used part of the poem for the chorus. The rest of the song is about finding the poem and how it affected me.

I hope you enjoy the songs and the album. You can listen to He Said She Said on these and other streaming services:

Many Faces of Love
He Said She Said
Many Sides of Love
Tales of Love and Death
Breakup City
The Elusive Farm Girl

My Albums:

The Struggle
Many Faces of Love

He Said She Said
Many Sides of Love
Tales of Love and Death
Breakup City
The Elusive Farm Girl

Here's some music videos I worked on:

Big Pun: Twinz (Deep Cover 98)

Crack The Sky: Mr. President
Greg Kihn: Horror Show
Nils Lofgren: Alone

Face Dancer: Red Shoes

The Sunday Cannons: Friends Become Flowers

Other blogs about songwriting:

Sean Paul Murphy: (Failed) Songwriter

Sean Paul Murphy: (Failed) Songwriter, Pt. 2

Be sure to check out my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God, published by TouchPoint Press. It is my true story of first faith and first love and how the two became almost fatally intertwined.

Here are some sample chapters of The Promise:

Chapter 1 - A Photograph

Chapter 2 - My Death

Chapter 3 - Childhood

Chapter 4 - Saved!

Chapter 5 - The Promise

Chapter 6 - The Mission

Chapter 7 - Mission Accomplished
Chapter 15 - Quarter To Midnight

Be sure to check out my novel Chapel Street. It tells the story of a young man straddling the line between sanity and madness while battling a demonic entity that has driven his family members to suicide for generations. It was inspired by an actual haunting my family experienced.

You can buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.

Learn more about the book, click Here.

Watch the book trailer:

Listen to me read some chapters here:

Chapel Street - Prologue - My Mother

Chapel Street - Chapter 1 - RestingPlace.com

Chapel Street - Chapter 2 - Elisabetta

Chapel Street - Chapter 3 - The Upload

Chapel Street - Chapter 4 - The Kobayashi Maru

Read about the true haunting that inspired the novel here:

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 24, Bad News Betty

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 25, Joe's Tale

Follow me on Twitter: SeanPaulMurphy

Follow me on Facebook: Sean Paul Murphy

Follow me on Instagram: Sean Paul Murphy

Subscribe on YouTube: Sean Paul Murphy

Tuesday, August 20, 2024

MANY SIDES OF LOVE released!

My new collection of songs Many Sides of Love has just been released. It is available on streaming services everywhere.

Wait a minute, Sean. This is the fourth album you've released in two months. Are you crazy?

I really don't want to get into the question of whether or not I'm crazy, but I can tell you why I have been releasing all of this music.

I have been writing music since 1983. I have written quite a few songs over the years, but I had no illusions. I'm rock star material. Nor was I ever in a band with the skill to take my songs to the next level. That's why I always considered myself a failed songwriter -- despite my suspicions that I had written some pretty good ones.

My songs remained on the creative back burner until about a year ago while I pursued the much more lucrative world of writing books and movies. Then I noticed I was losing my voice. I really found myself in a downward spiral after I blew my voice out at a karaoke party at the Red Eye Yacht Club in Middle River. Since I previously made no real effort to record my songs, I knew they would be lost forever if I didn't record them myself. Using a simple setup with my iPhone, I recorded myself singing my songs one by one and uploading the videos to my YouTube channel. If you listen to them chronologically, you can hear my voice getting worse and worse.

The growth on my vocal cords

Finally, I went to the doctor. He discovered a possibly cancerous growth on my vocal cords and recommended an immediate operation. There was no guarantee I would be able to speak after the operation so I hurried through a few more songs before I went under the knife. Fortunately, the operation was a huge success and my voice is now better than ever.

I decided I liked my songs and I kept recording them, especially after the writer's strike and actor's strike ruined some promising movie deals I had in development. However, I still had no illusions. I couldn't give my songs the aural treatment I felt they deserved with just my voice and my acoustic guitar.

Then I discovered Udio, the AI Music Generator....

A musician friend of mine recently asked me why I went all in with artificial intelligence. The answer is simple: Udio gives me the opportunity to realize the songs the way I imagined them in my head. It would have cost me thousands of dollars on studio musicians and producers to accomplish what I did on Udio. The only downside was that Udio, in its current iteration, cannot preserve the melodies I originally wrote for the songs. I regret that at times. However, Udio has been surprisingly effective at coming up with compelling melodies.

Still, some folks have said they like my recordings of the songs better. I am greatly flattered by that attitude, and I will reward them with at least one album of "demos." However, on the internet, the reaction has been the opposite. According to my YouTube analytics, the Udio versions of my songs are much more popular on the whole than my own recordings. Who is listening is interesting too. On my versions of my songs, my audience was 80% over 55 and 85% male. The audience for my Udio songs is much wider and more diverse. 80% of my listeners are under 55, with the majority of them in their twenties and thirties. My audience is also split almost evenly between men and women. Most surprisingly, on the songs that really take off, the majority of the views are from the Philippines.

I'll be sticking with Udio for the time being.

Here are the official tracks from the album:

1). A GOOD FRIEND, NOT I. Another friendzone opus, but in this case, the protagonist (me, actually) was relegated to the friendzone after being more than a friend. That's a little more difficult than starting off in the friendzone.... This is one of my favorite songs and Udio versions. The Udio version is now my official version. I took the time to learn to play it that way!

2). SOMEONE. Someone was born from I conversation I had with a young lady about her desire to have someone to enjoy the smaller moments of life with. I felt the same way and wrote this song.

3). YOUR MIRROR. I wrote this song after a young lady expressed concern that she was too damaged to love or be loved again. I advised her to look at herself through the eyes of love: Mine, in particular.

4). I'LL SOOTHE YOUR PAIN. This is one of my favorite rockers. It's another plea for a young lady to step out and love again after a number of disappointments. This is a very familiar theme in my songs which makes me think: Perhaps the ladies were ready to love again -- except not with me.

5). COLD AS STEEL. This song was always one of my favorite 12-bar blues workouts. Here's the problem: Udio doesn't know how to do 12-bar blues formatting, so I had to go with a Southern rock approach. I really like it.

6). THROUGH HELL AND BACK. This is a hard rock song about a former girlfriend calling a guy to ask him to take her back. He resists -- initially. It's a fantasy, of course. If one of my old girlfriends called me to take them back, I wouldn't have resisted for a second!

7). LET GO. My faith has always been very important to me and this mid-80s song was my first attempt to express it in music. I think I wrote this around the time we briefly changed the name of our band from The Atomic Enema to The New Catholics.

8). THE GIFTS YOU GIVE. This is a farm girl period love song. I can't remember the exact context, but I was obviously very happy with her at the moment.

9). MANDY, OH MANDY. An ode to my elusive farm girl.

10). DOUBT IF YOU MUST. This is another one of my "come out of your shell and give me a chance" songs. I can't remember if it was successful. I really like this version. A good rocker.

11). SHE MATERIALIZES AT WILL. I think this is one of my best songs. It really worked with my craggy voice. Very Leonard Cohen. The Udio version is more yacht rock, but this is one of the instances were I might like my version better.

12). THREADS. I honestly can't remember when I wrote this song originally, or who it was written about. I either wrote it to my elusive farm girl during one of our breakups or to my wife when we were going through a rough patch. It works either way. I would love to get a country artist to record it.

13). SOMEBODY'S SEARCHING. I wrote this song as I was working my way through my breakup with my first girlfriend. I knew it was time to move on, and I was confident there was someone out there looking for the same thing I was looking for. I was right.

14). COME LORD. The previous song was Somebody's Searching so I thought it was best to follow it up with another gospel song 'cause it's always good to be searching for the Lord. He can always be found.

I hope you enjoy the songs and the album. You can listen to Many Sides of Love on these and other streaming services:

Amazon Music

Apple Music

iHeart Radio
Pandora
Spotify
YouTube Music

My Albums:

The Struggle
Many Faces of Love

He Said She Said
Many Sides of Love
Tales of Love and Death
Breakup City
The Elusive Farm Girl

Here's some music videos I worked on:

Big Pun: Twinz (Deep Cover 98)

Crack The Sky: Mr. President
Greg Kihn: Horror Show
Nils Lofgren: Alone

Face Dancer: Red Shoes

The Sunday Cannons: Friends Become Flowers

Other blogs about songwriting:

Sean Paul Murphy: (Failed) Songwriter

Sean Paul Murphy: (Failed) Songwriter, Pt. 2

Here are some sample chapters of The Promise:

Chapter 1 - A Photograph

Chapter 2 - My Death

Chapter 3 - Childhood

Chapter 4 - Saved!

Chapter 5 - The Promise

Chapter 6 - The Mission

Chapter 7 - Mission Accomplished
Chapter 15 - Quarter To Midnight

Learn more about the book, click Here.

Watch the book trailer:

Listen to me read some chapters here:

Chapel Street - Prologue - My Mother

Chapel Street - Chapter 1 - RestingPlace.com

Chapel Street - Chapter 2 - Elisabetta

Chapel Street - Chapter 3 - The Upload

Chapel Street - Chapter 4 - The Kobayashi Maru

Read about the true haunting that inspired the novel here:

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 24, Bad News Betty

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 25, Joe's Tale

Follow me on Twitter: SeanPaulMurphy

Follow me on Facebook: Sean Paul Murphy

Follow me on Instagram: Sean Paul Murphy

Subscribe on YouTube: Sean Paul Murphy

Saturday, August 10, 2024

TALES OF LOVE AND DEATH released

My new collection of songs Tales of Love and Death has just been released. It is available on streaming services everywhere.

My first two albums, The Elusive Farm Girl and Breakup City, were designed to tell a continuous story over the course of fourteen songs. This album is different. This collection is not designed to tell a single story. However, I am using it as a platform for some of my story songs. I always loved a good story song, and I tried to tell a few of them here. I was aided in my mission by my wife Debbie. She had some stories to tell herself, and I helped her complete and realize them. I think the songs I wrote with her, Where The Sun Sets and New Year's Eve, are two of the best ones on the albums.

Yours Truly with Deborah

I hope you enjoy the songs. Once again, the lyrics are all original, but the artificial intelligence engine Udio provided the music. Debbie thinks our versions of our songs are better. Here they are:

Where The Sun Sets:

New Year's Eve:

Here are the official tracks from the album:

1). A MOMENT LOST FOREVER. I enjoy the company of women. Some of my closest friends and most trusted confidantes have been women. Therefore, I've spent a lot of time in the friendzone. I am generally happy in the friendzone. However, every once and a while you wondered what if.... I later discovered that some of my female friends felt the same way....

2). FINALLY MEETING. This song is about meeting a sweet young lady I got to know online who flew to Baltimore to meet me in person. You'll hear more about her in an upcoming album.

3). ROYSTON GIRL. This is a song about my first girlfriend which could have easily fit on my album Breakup City. However, the reggae genre makes the song feel happier and more upbeat than the lyrics would indicate.

4). DRIFTING APART. This is my favorite rocker on the album. This is a song that would have fit easily on my The Elusive Farm Girl album but I saved it for this one.

5). BRING BACK THE MUSIC. This song is a relatively straightforward plea for continued intimacy in a relationship.

6). WHERE THE SUN SETS. My wife Deborah came home from work with some of the lyrics and the theme for this breakup song. I helped her complete the lyrics and worked on the music with her. This is a favorite of mine.

7). LITTLE GIRL BROKEN. I usually write songs from the first person perspective. I stepped out of my comfort zone for this song. This is how I viewed a former girlfriend who experienced a lot of crushing trauma during her life. Sadly, I later met many women who had similar experiences. I dedicate this song to all of them. I think it might be the best song on the album. I hope to have an established artist record it one day.

8). DEBORAH, OH DEBORAH. A love song to my wife and sometime songwriting partner.

9). SUPERNOVA BRIGHT. Another love song. I really enjoy this Udio version, but I think I like my original interpretation better. In my version, the verses are built around the D, D+, D6, D7 chords. I'm sure someone else used that progression at some time, but I never heard it.

10). THE GATES OF HEAVEN. This is another rare upbeat love song. I don't write many of them because I usually only write songs when I am depressed.

11). WHAT IF? This is another song about the lovely young lady who came to visit me in Baltimore. There was a rather large obstacle to us becoming romantically involved. This song has me musing what if....

12). THE WASH OF TIME. I wrote this song about the inevitability of death after my wife received the call that her Uncle Sonny had died. The next day my wife and I recorded the original version of this song as a tribute to our lost relatives. CLICK HERE to listen to that version.

13). NEW YEAR'S EVE. My wife's ex-husband died on New Year's Eve, inspiring her to write this song. Once again, she started it and I helped her finish it. I think it is one of the best songs on the album.

14). ONLY I SURVIVED. I always loved a good sea epic, whether it be Gordon Lightfoot's Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald or Crack The Sky's Sea Epic. I decided to do one by retelling Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Superficially, it might seem like I stepped out of my perspective for this song. However, the song is really about survivor guilt, and, after losing two siblings to suicide and an eight-year-old granddaughter, that is something I know quite a bit about. I always get emotional when I sing this song. When I sang my version, I had to record it twice because I started crying during the first take.