It's Just the Song
Opening the 1999 album, Harry's Gone Fishing, "It's Just the Song" is one of a number of latter-day Leon compositions which address his own life as a songwriter for their subject matter. (It even cites a couple of his earlier songs by name - "Stand Up For Judas", "On Her Silver Jubilee".) Here, he's turning over the point of writing different types of songs in his mind, as if taking seriously the voices which he'd laughed off in "Sing a Song to Please Us". What's it all for? In the end, concludes Leon, the point is just to give flight to the song itself - in which context, "It's Just the Song" is not merely an explanation but a personal manifesto.
"In years to come, the joky references in the verses of 'It's Just the Song' will need footnotes. The chorus, however, is clear enough - an over-simple explanation of why I write and sing songs. I love the song form. I like singing and communicating with an audience through song. As the song says: 'I'm only telling stories the best way that I can'. That's what I do." - (Turning Silence Into Song (songbook), p45)
“In the end, I’m writing songs because I love the song form, its conciseness, the way it balances form against content, the way the words work, their shape, their sound, their colour, the way the music heightens the words, all that sort of thing. It’s just the song.” - LR (sleevenotes to The World Turned Upside Down (CD box set), p57)
“In the end, I’m writing songs because I love the song form, its conciseness, the way it balances form against content, the way the words work, their shape, their sound, their colour, the way the music heightens the words, all that sort of thing. It’s just the song.” - LR (sleevenotes to The World Turned Upside Down (CD box set), p57)
Recordings
Version 1 (1999)