In this story, which originally aired on NPR’s This American Life in August of 2007, Ms. Kine talks about what makes a great break up song and details her efforts to put her break up with her boy friend into song, seeking advice from break up song expert, Phil Collins.

Besides being heartbreakingly funny, this piece offers an  honest look at the way songs affect our lives and details, quite accurately, the progression from emotion to final recording, that is such an integral part of the songwriting process. It also played a large part in inspiring me to do this blog thingy. Did I mention it’s really funny? I did? Well, maybe it’s best if I just shut up and let Starlee have center stage for the next half hour. Enjoy!

Click here to listen to Starlee Kine’s “Break-Up Song”

“Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know”….Groucho

Let’s talk about songs. Songs are the background music of our lives. They are playing everywhere, all the time. They are captions to our memories and the sign posts that mark our individual time lines. They are playing when we fall in and out of love, when we get married, when our children are born and when loved ones die. They soothe us, commiserate with our predicaments and inspire us to action.

Songs are extremely accessible and portable. On the most elemental level, you need only to get naked and step into a shower to partake of their pleasures. You don’t need to hire an orchestra to sing your baby to sleep at night . . . you don’t even have to be very good at it. You just have to open your mouth and sing.

Another cool thing about songs is that they give us an excuse to dance. Imagine how stupid you would look bopping around to nothing but silence, but call up Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music” on your iPod and you become a one person dance party. Tired of dancing by yourself? No problem. Songs make it easy to find other people to dance with and all that dancing begets sex and sex begets the need for more sex and more dancing and more songs.

And the need for more songs begot the music business . . . but I don’t want to talk about that.

Instead, let’s talk about the people who create and perform the songs that have become such consequential threads in the fabric of our lives. Let’s talk about Joni Mitchel and Bob Dylan and Paul Simon and James Taylor and Lennon and McCartney and all the folks who raised the popular song to an art form.

While we’re at it, let’s not forget Leiber and Stoller, Goffin and King, Sedaka and Greenfield, Holland, Dozier and Holland, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye and all the wonderful writers and performers who built upon the great, pop traditions of George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rogers and Hammerstein, Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg and on and on and on.

And therein lies the beauty of this endeavor. No matter where or when I reach into the well of possibilities that is the history of the American popular song, whether it’s Joni Mitchell’s “Judgement of the Moon and Stars,” “Hello Young Lovers” from The King and I, Big Momma Thornton singing “You Ain’t Nothin But A Hound Dog,” Paul Simon’s “Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover,” Cole Porter’s “Every Time We Say Goodbye” . . . I always manage to retreive something wonderful.

So, let’s talk about songs!

Photo “Grand Piano” by suzi9mm@DeviantArt.com