Category Archives: Songaweek

This month, we had to write and record a song “about bioluminescence,” because John Hodgman told us to, and we’re doing a thing called Song Fu, which, among other things, requires that we occasionally do what John Hodgman tells us to do. (This is a blog post I wrote explaining Song Fu.)

We recorded a podcast with Ken Plume & Molly Lewis about the songwriting process for this month. YOU CAN LISTEN TO IT. (mp3 link)

And you can listen to the song we wrote about Bioluminescence, and even download it, if you want:

It’s called “The Way I Glow.”

The Songwriting Process

When the prompt for this month’s challenge was announced, I immediately decided that I didn’t want to be “too literal” in the interpretation of the challenge. This is one of the many winning strategies that I’ve learned from the reality fashion-designer-TV show Project Runway: don’t be too literal about the challenge. (Also: be true to your own aesthetic, be nice to nice people, and don’t use tulle).

There were a lot of ways still to go with Bioluminescence, however. For example: did you know that there is a bioluminescent creature with a Latin name that literally means “vampire squid from hell”? It’s true. Ask Wikipedia.

“The Way I Glow” is a song from the point of view of a bioluminescent girl, who is heartbroken and angry and maybe a little confused about why this dude broke up with her.

We must thank the scientists on Twitter (and my Bio 100 teacher) who helped us understand the affects of Green Fluorescent Protein: I’ve learned, for example, that if you tried to make a person glow the way you make mice glow with GFP, it would mostly show up in a person’s mucous membranes–mouth, nose, eyes, etc. Learning! Yay!

Plugs & Links

Stay tuned for next month’s Song Fu. The prompt will be announced on the Song Fu website on February 6.

Just over a dozen songwriters responded to this month’s Song Fu prompt. You can see all those entries in the Song Fu forum. You should also listen to and spend money on the song Molly Lewis wrote for this prompt, which I will embed below.