Song Club #55: Bells

Writing songs of celebration, mourning, or warning

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This week, bells. What about bells! When you think about it, there is such a marvelous everythingness to bells.

They sound in celebration and mourning. They signal danger and safety, or beginnings and ends. They offer meanings both universally understood and arcane.

In music, bells are used to create a wide array of moods. The soft sleigh bells in Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back To Black’ lend a heavy song some lightness and nostalgia. By contrast, Mike Oldfield’s iconic ‘Tubular Bells’ theme for The Exorcist delivers mild foreboding. Bells make songs feel majestic, whimsical, eerie …

Bells are rich also from a lyrical standpoint. Take these from ‘The Bells’ by Beach House:

The way, the blue, she cuts right through
And so the stars are breaking hearts
Like the bells
They ring out all the same

In concert and comparison, these two images evoke fate, foreverness, heartbreak, and inevitability.

Also, and finally, ‘bell’ is simply a beautiful word. A word that peals itself.

Below, five entry points so you can explore bells from various angles in your writing.

Ring-a-ding-ding!
Lucy

‘Entry Points’