'I Didn't Lie'

By Scott Coner

Country Artist

            I have had a pretty good run as far as songwriting goes to this point. I’m not referencing commercial success. I only mean that the songs I have written seem to represent my life pretty much up to now. I know this is not everyone’s approach, but I kind of wish it was. I have been a part of the songwriting mill in Nashville. I have met a complete strangers, had a cup of coffee, and written a song. I don’t like this approach. It feels cheap, and it feels like I am cheating whatever potential listener is out there into believing some conjured up experience that never happened. For what it’s worth, only one of those songs was ever recorded by me, and I wrote most of the lyrics.

            I have always hoped and believed that the songs that I have loved all of my life weren’t just a collection of words that rhyme. When George Jones sang “The Grand Tour”, I felt like I was walking through an empty, lonely house full of memories. When Vern Gosdin sang one of his masterpieces, I felt like he was telling me about his life and not someone else’s. “You don’t know about lonely until it’s chiseled in stone” is a line that haunts me to this day. These men took the songs and made them their own.

            The song, “Maybe She Lied”, my duet with country legend Tanya Tucker, was written after a very good friend of mine went home from work and found his wife gone along with all of her belongings. He never saw it coming, and it shocked the daylights out of him when it happened. I thought quite a bit about his situation and probably thanked God that it didn’t happen to me personally, to be honest. But the song was from a very personal perspective. I sat down with a yellow pad of paper and an acoustic guitar and wrote the song complete in one sitting. At the time I wrote it, I never planned on Tanya Tucker singing with me on it. Honestly, I didn’t even write it as a duet. When she agreed to work with me, I took a green highlighter and pulled the song apart turning it into what you hear today. I knew the song was longer than what what most radio stations will play today, but the song was important enough to me that I couldn’t take that into consideration.

Scott Coner (Photo by Cynnamae Media Productions)

            Now, saying all this doesn’t mean that I take my music so seriously that each song has to be specifically about my life’s events. No, what I’m saying is that many of the songs I write have a distinct meaning. Some of them are about things I’ll probably never share with anyone. Not because they represent something bad, they would simply be impossible for me to try to explain. Other songs such as “Crimson and Clover,” for instance, were not written by me. But that song as well as the other “cover” songs I have done meant something. They represent a snapshot from a moment in my life, and I wanted to share those songs with others. I always look at those recordings like a kid bringing something to school for “show and tell”. I love those songs and I want to brag on them a little bit.

            There are many ways to write a successful song. Nashville likes to put prolific writers together and churn out hits. There are songwriting teams that strike gold with a certain rhythm or “feel” in their compositions. Nashville, L.A., and New York have all proved that the ultimate way to have a hit is to put big money behind a song, get heavy rotation, and the rest is history. I don’t disagree with any approach. After all, the business of music is about promoting the song and the artist. Remember “Achy Breaky Heart”? Oh yes you do! You only act like you didn’t sing along in your car. LOL!

            Listen, this business has always been about hits. There have been artists that could take a song and make it theirs. Elvis did a fine job covering Leiber and Stoller, and he was very convincing. Lennon and McCartney seemed to show up with a hit every now and again. Alabama dominated the radio for a very long time singing their own compositions, as well as songs written by others. And I have been told that George Strait could sing the yellow pages if he wanted and still have a hit. And the way that man sings I wouldn’t put it past him.

            What I meant to say from the beginning of this awful rant is that, although the other methods bring us joy, it is always nice to hear an artist talk about the importance of a certain song and why they wrote it. It just adds depth and meaning. I remember hearing Alan Jackson sing “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?”, and I thought it was one of the most important popular songs I had ever heard in my life. I still do.

            I have the lyric sheet from “Maybe She Lied” that Tanya used in the studio with me. On it, she wrote: “Scott, I didn’t Lie”. Now, I never dated Tanya Tucker. But, sometimes when I hear her sing my song, I swear I think she and I had a little something going on one time or other. Probably not though. I’m pretty sure I’d remember that, and I would have had a lot more to write about.

            Scott Coner is a country singer-songwriter who has worked with country greats such as T. Graham Brown, Charlie Daniels, and Tanya Tucker. Check out his latest videos and songs at www.Facebook.com/ScottConerMusic, www.YouTube.com/user/ScottConer, and www.ScottConer.com. You can follow Scott at www.Twitter.com/ScottConer.