September 2026

Hello Friends. Happy fall or autumn, as you see fit to call it. Interesting that there are people called Autumn, but I have yet to meet anyone called Fall. I’m sure there is someone out there called Fall Winter, or something like that. Words are fun. 

Speaking of words, as you know by now, I love them. I love to write them, read them, and think about them. I’m doing all three of those things right now, in fact. I read and listen to hundreds of books a year, and between writing for myself and writing for work, I write tens of thousands of words per month. Still, in my life, I would bet I’ve heard more words sung to me than anything else. None of this is shocking; you all know how much I love music. 

Of course, I love the music itself, and I firmly believe one can tell a story using only music, but I really do love to sit and think about the lyrics. For those of us born before the internet, there wasn’t always an easy way to know what all the lyrics were. Sure, some artists would publish their lyrics on the record sleeve. I had plenty of cassette tapes that had fold-out liner notes with all the lyrics printed on them in 6-point font. I had better eyesight back then, but it still wasn’t easy to read them. Once CDs became the main way people bought music, the vast majority of them had the lyrics inside the CD booklet. 

Of course, I didn’t buy every single album that came out. Even if I could have afforded that, where would I store all that physical media? Instead, the way I learned the lyrics was to listen to the song over and over. If I could tape it from the radio, that was a bonus, but more often than not, I had to wait for it to come on the radio again and then, when it did, I tried my hardest to pay attention. I’m me, with my busy brain, so I didn’t always pay attention, but maybe on the third or fifth listen, I picked up a few more lyrical gems. 

I freely admit it. I get lyrics wrong all the time. The first time I heard Train’s “Drops of Jupiter,” I thought he asked, “Did you make it to the Milky Way to see the lights have faded, Van Halen is overrated…” First, I was mad because how dare you, sir? Van Halen is not overrated. Second, What!? That made no sense in the context of the song, but he did sing about Mozart and the home exercise craze Tae-bo in the same sentence, so anything was possible. I later learned that he really says “...that heaven is overrated…” and THAT makes way more sense. I will admit to singing it wrong sometimes still. 

One of my favorite bands of all time, R.E.M., notoriously mixed the vocal track low so that the lyrics were a mystery, and lead singer Michael Stipe’s voice was just an instrument. They even named their first album Murmur just to prove a point. Those first few albums are still fantastic, and honestly, I am still not 100 percent sure about all the lyrics, but I am required to pay attention all the time. I am required to think about it and piece it together to figure out what they mean and why they are with that particular music. It’s like they want us to be musical anthropologists. 

When they finally decided to write a song where Stipe enunciated every single word, they were so fast that people couldn’t keep up. Go ahead, listen to “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)” and try not to end up like Chris Farley and David Spade in Tommy Boy. If you do, don’t be ashamed. Stipe himself had to have the lyrics printed out for him during live performances. 

I feel rewarded when a song gives itself to me on the third or thirtieth listen. Learning a new song, without the lyrics sheet, is a lot like learning a new language. We stumble through it. We get it wrong, and eventually we figure it out, and it has deeper meaning because we earned it. As the lyrics reveal themselves to us, we get to feel connected to them. We get to decide if the lyrics are how the singer really feels, or if they created a character through which they want us to feel some kind of way. Are they earnest? Is it a joke? Is it satire? Is it a protest song? It doesn’t matter if they wrote them last week or 100 years ago. I think it is kind of beautiful. Words. They matter. 

Please, write back and let me know what some of your favorite lyrics are…and why. 

Notes From My Headphones

I would be remiss if I didn’t share a song I love that intentionally makes no sense. Lea shared it with me for the first time several years ago, and I just loved it. It is a 1972 song by an Italian singer/songwriter named Adriano Celentano called “Prisencolinensinainciusol.” The lyrics are nonsense, but it is beautiful because we can all hear the words we want to hear. The song is literally different for each person who hears it. You can listen to Celentano talk about it in a 2012 interview on NPR here. If you watched Spike Lee’s Highest to Lowest, you will have heard it sampled over the end credits as well. This song makes an appearance in my forthcoming novel, Jane, so if you listen now, when you get to that part in the book, you can nod and smile. 

Weezer released their new album called Weezer. To be fair, they have a bunch of those. This one is called The Gold Album, as the cover is gold. The others: Blue, Red, Green…you get it. Anyway, I listened to it pretty much non-stop for 3 days, and by the end of that time, I knew about half the lyrics. I know I don’t have them all down yet, but I will get there, and then I will forget them, but they will come back when I listen again. There are some great songs on that album, but the second single “We Might As Well Be Strangers” featuring Wednesday is still the standout for me. The guest singer Wednesday croons, “I don’t want your songs…to become the clues…as to why we lost you…”  To me, and maybe not to you, or to the band themselves, it is a song about the band, who have spent 30 years together and are growing and changing, but working through all of that and choosing to stay together. The title could be taken literally, or it could be a clever dodge. The beauty of lyrics is that it is all up to you.

Notes From My Bookshelf

T.C. Kemper’s debut middle-reader novel The Ginghams is not about a band called the Ginghams, but instead, it is about making sure you can find your own voice in a world of conformity. If you wanted to have your tweens read or watch The Stepford Wives but thought that it was wildly inappropriate for them, even though the themes of it are really important, then this book is the one to give them. 

Lois Lowry still writes books, and she is still the queen of middle-reader fiction. I stumbled upon a book of hers from 2023 called The Windeby Puzzle. It is part fiction, part non-fiction, part mystery, and all awesome. While it isn’t about learning the lyrics, it is about learning all the facts and seeing a complete story come together. Five stars, because Lowry only writes bangers. 

Notes From My Keyboard

I have a new job, and so I’ve been busy with that, but I have been plugging along on Regardless of You, the final book of The Austen Chronicles. I have really loved spending time with Walt and Winnie. I am at the part where the cast from the previous books are all in it, so it is good to see them too. There will be one final story with Maggie and Junior that will appear in Tonya Todd’s final 52 Love series in a few years. Hanging out with Maggie and Junior made me want to stop this book and write that story, but I know that would only be putting off the inevitable. The big tragic moment needs to happen in the new book, and I don’t want to do it, but I must.

In other big news, Jane is now available for pre-order. You can get it from your favorite local bookstore IRL, or you can get it directly from the publisher and get a discount. If you can’t wait to get your hands on the book and want to read a digital Advanced Reader Copy, I have included one for you. All you have to do is click here. It will take you to my Google Drive, and you can download the watermarked PDF. If you do read the ARC, I would really, really appreciate it if you leave me a review on Goodreads or on StoryGraph or wherever you leave book reviews. That really helps me get the word out.

Finally, about a year ago, my pals Mike Burton and Paul McGuigan started a book club. We read a crazy book about one of Paul’s ancestors, Hudy McGuigan. The book is bonkers in all the best ways. The show is incredibly fun. The first episode is out in the world, and we hope to bring you a new book club recording every few months. Please listen to the first episode here. I wrote and sang the theme song. It is bad; I am earnest. 

Thank you again for being a subscriber

ARF