Lyrics / Prosthetic Hearts Can Never Be Broken

I olove the title and the words arent too bad . What I do when I read lyrics like this is play my guitar and try to wrap a little melody around it. I found it was quite easy to maek a tune to these lyrics which is an indidaction that they are good . Theya re certainly better than most of teh crap I have read today in the lyrics sectinos so write it down in a book

The image of a prosthetic heart and all the connotation that it evokes is excellent metaphor, and a great title, but the actual lyrics of the song fail to live up to the lofty expectations the title creates.

I find myself looking fruitlessly in the words for the cold metalic-and-plastic imagery of the prosthetic heart, something suggesting “replacement” and “substitution”...a new lover, an affair…

...something addressing the metaphor of the “artifical” and “mechanical” nature of a prosthetic heart, having the capacity to do the bare minimum to survive, but devoid of all the romaticism we burden the heart muscle with in our collective metaphoric thought, like staying in loveless marriages for the sake of the kids or marrying for money and not love or the emptiness of a one night stand as opposed to true love.

(Poor brain, the real love muscle, the one which engorgedly engages in all good mind f’in, and the muscle which does all the real pumping of the exercise of love, so overlooked and misunderstood.)

The title alludes to such complexities of love and relationships, but the lyrics ultimately don’t deliver.

And I even found myself thinking at some points that you could have gotten a little more mileage out of the ideas you did play upon.  For example, the lines “i’ve already booked an international flight, / just to be away from you tonight.”  The first half, the idea of getting on a plane to quietly slip out the back door of a dead relationship in the dead of night is about a dramatic a conceptualization of escape as can be imagined, that’s great stuff, it really is, but that only begs for the second line to play out that image to its fullest, to tug every last drop from of milk from that metaphoric tit.  I was looking for words more like “i’ve already booked an international flight, just to fly away from you tonight” or “just to escape our plastic heart tonight”, something couched more heavily in the imagery of the preceding line or the metaphoric imagery of the title.  I don’t know exactly, I just know it felt like that the idea your started with that line didn’t end as strongly as it began…almost as if it had been better said on its own without the implied ending of why “i’ve already booked an international flight.”  Period.  We understand why without the literal completion of the thought.  I’d like to hear words which fulfilled the needs of metered rhyme of your lyrics which would have the same effect.

But this is all probably a whole lot more analytical thought than you really want to hear for a “cute” song about breaking up, leaving.  That’s just what happens when a poet dissects your work…the scalpel cuts into the flesh and the hands prod at the heart in diagnostic examination of its strength and weakness.

Overall, I’m probably not the person to be critiquing your song anyway, as it sounds “like country music to my ears”, and I hate country music.

Ultimately, the piece does entertain and at least provokes thought about the metaphoric imagery you conjure up, so it does what cute songs are supposed to do, I suppose.  But I can’t help but think the potential greatness of the concept ends up just being good.  Not that good is bad, it’s just not great.  But this is just entertainment, right?!

(that’s a not so subtle plug for my own work, specifically a poem “you’re like country music to my ears”...find it in my portfolio if you’re so inclined, or if you just want some ammo to respond to my review so you can say “nice speech buddy, why don’t you practice what your preach” or something clever and witty like that.)

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January 09, 2007

by AnonEmotus

personal info reviewer stats

No. of Reviews	Overall Quality	Comment Followup
134	93.3% (15 votes)	19.0%

Age	Gender	Location	Last Login
16	F	Los Alamitos, CA	November 26

No, this song is NOT intended for Country music at all.

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Hey, Anon!  Thanks for asking me to review this.  I like the sense of loss this piece emotes, not to mention the “post-modern, post-industrial” feeling. The references to the subway and the international flight ring true—its a given in our society that we seem to run as far away as we can from problems, and you have brought that to the fore.

There are a few things that I feel you might want to review.

First, the uneven rhyme scheme is unusual, and it makes the flow choppy.  Taking each stanza separately, you have:

Stanza 1 & 2: A,B,C,B
Chorus 1: A,A,B,A
Stanza 3: A,B,B,B
Chorus 2 (at prosthetic hearts): A,B,C,A

If you want choppy (which, perhaps, add to the feel of this piece?), you could leave the stanzas alone and simply make your chorus rhyme scheme the same to keep a continuity in the flow.

Second, pulling out line starters “so” & “and” in your chorus, and slightly changing the lines would make more of an emotional impact, I think.  For example, here is one way you might address Chorus 1:

“prosthetic hearts can never be broken
Go ahead! Buy that subway token!
Scurry through the dank, dark tunnels,
dragging the words you left unspoken.”

Notice, I changed “underground” to “dank, dark”. Because the narrator is saying “buy a subway token”, you automatically tell us it is underground—but what is an underground tunnel like?  By changing “carrying” to “dragging” the words, there is an added concept of so much baggage it cannot be carried in a backpack.  Of course, as always, this is merely one way you might choose to tighten this. I guess I could sum up what I mean as “Show, don’t tell”.

I really enjoyed this piece, and look forward to seeing your revisions!