Bite-Sized NewsBoys eXtra #1
Song: I Fought The La
Album: newsboys: The Greatest Hits

As a writer this song speaks volumes to me, it would do so to anyone who’s attempted to write something…and failed.

Luv_Liberty_Oi: Hi! Have you ever gotten writers block?
TheNewsboys [Peter Furler] say, "Yes, so I wrote about it!"
–CrossWalk.com Chat, 2001

It happens to all of us, more often then we could possibly wish!

I still like a song with some lyrics to chew on
But there are days when they just fight the groove
You can’t stare down the inevitable
It’s like the sun. I fought the la
And the la won

I’m currently working on a book in which every chapter, is something that is their for the express purpose of being chewed on. Now that’s hard! I can "free style" a little now and then, but when it all comes down: "it’s still gotta pay." I fight the words, and the sentences, and the puncuation, Peter fights the la, has he’s not a bookwriter but a songwriter. When I fight I’ll stare at it, but it overcomes me anyways and I usually surrender, usually only for a few days but there’s this certain book I worked on a few months ago. I lost the fight several times in the space of a few days. I fought it, it won. …I never passed the first page too. Humiliating.

You can free fall from any height at all
But the ground won’t get outta your way
We can’t fight the inevitable
It’s gonna come.

Today’s advice: don’t leave your characters stranded! You can’t fight the enivitable! They. Will. Fall! The ground’s not going to get our of their way, unless you want to end up like Tolkien, once they’ve fallen, it’s your own fault, don’t ressurect them. Too cheesy. Back to the point: I love those first two lines "you can free fall…" they’re so very poetic, if you know what I mean, certainly something can rhyme without being poetic.

In a interview with Paul Colman (interviewed by TitleTrakk.com) we see a little into the history behind the excessive lalalala-ing done in this song. Paul says:

I learned a lot watching the way Peter Furler makes records and writes music. I really appreciate that he doesn’t manipulate it. He just kinda lets it come. And yet he’s got an incredible work ethic, working at it every day. He’ll pick up a song that’s kinda not working, and without forcing it, he’ll eventually come up with something golden. He sits in his home studio and reads the Scriptures or a book, and then he just kind of gets a melodic idea. He gets a beat going, and then he just picks up a guitar and a microphone and he just starts singing. It doesn’t even have to be lyrics, it could be “la, la, la”.

I know that happened with “Your Love is Better Than Life”. He sent me the chorus. He just sort of made syllables for the rest on the microphone. I was listening to it going, “Man, these lyrics are deep. People are really going to get something from this.” So I wrote out phonetically on my computer exactly what he said, and then I tried to put the lyrics to the syllables.

Here we have a man doing his best to remove the "la, la, la" from a song. The only difficulty is the "la, la, la" held the fort and kept a place in the song. The la won.

So now, I’m not going to antalize every word and sentence, I’m just giving you the key picture with a little off topic yatter in between to get you on the right thinking path. The right thinking path: this song is the lament of a fellow with writers’ block.

Lyrics / Listen

(Imported from HomeschoolBlogger.)