Keith Dominique

"You have to think that you’re not a genius. You have to think that, "Well, I just worked really hard and I kept working on this song until it sounded good, and I spent hours and hours and hours tweaking and tweaking and tweaking until I really liked it." If you think you’re a genius, then you’re just going to fucking barf onto a piece of paper and call it art and put it out on the Internet, and then it won’t be very good any more. So you can’t really take the feedback literally, first of all." -Jack Conte …Read more

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted here. I just thought I’d give everyone an update, so that no one thinks I disappeared.

This March saw the release of my new album, and even though it’s only a couple of months old, all the songs on it were written a year ago or more. I was tied up with so many other things, that I didn’t write a single song for all of 2012.

That isn’t to say 2012 was a year of complete unproductivity. Besides finishing up the album, I also took on several outside projects. All…Read more

This was another case where I had the title scrawled in my notebook for a very long time before finally writing the song. I also always knew that it was going to be the title of the album. It’s just one of those grand-sounding titles that seem to work well for many purposes. It came from an oft-misheard lyric in a Creedence Clearwater Revival song, called “Bad Moon Rising”, where John Fogerty actually sounds like he’s singing “brand new horizon”. Which I thought would’ve been a better lyric. :) It also…Read more

This is the album’s second song to take its title from a book I didn’t read. :)

The opening line mentions looking up at the sky without being afraid of what comes down. At the time I wrote it, there was all the talk of the 2012 apocalypse, and objects falling from the sky and all that, which I admit had me a bit freaked out. Because I find it easier to write about distressing thoughts after I’ve gotten some distance from them, I remember thinking at the time that it was rather brave of me to include that…Read more

This one is sort of my twist on the classic summer romance song. I recall someone once commenting that there aren’t many sad songs about the beach. I guess this one qualifies as the exception, though I initially didn’t even want this song to take place on a beach. I’m not an avid beachgoer, and haven’t been to one in years. But I couldn’t think of another place as synonymous with summertime. So in the end, I just went with it.

It’s about a guy lamenting a lost love. Despite remembering so many details from…Read more

It seems when you can sum up your life’s situation in a catch phrase, the song will pretty much write itself. In this case, I suppose I was thinking about the times in my life when I may have felt lonely, and having a strong suspicion that there are large numbers of people in the world who feel the exact same way. Yet not being able to prove it, because no one ever talks about it. Which brings about more loneliness. Guess it’s a vicious cycle.

The reference in the song to “moving walls”…originally, I meant…Read more

Out of all the songs I’ve written, this is probably the one with the most potential to get me into trouble…haha…It’s based on real life events. Even though the parties involved are from my relatively distant past, and will likely never hear this song, I think common decency is to respect others’ privacy. So don’t ask. :)

It’s also my only song so far to contain a drug reference. I often joke that gives me street cred. (Read: no it doesn’t.)

It’s about a girl who falls in love with a rock musician who…Read more

This is one of two songs on the album to be titled after a book. Though in both cases, I didn’t actually read the book, so any similarities in subject matter are purely coincidental.

There was a bit of a Dylan influence going on in this one, even though it probably misses that mark. I do recall someone telling me that stylistically, it reminded them of a track off the Beatles’ “Rubber Soul”. I’m slightly ashamed to admit that’s one album I’ve never actually listened to in its entirety, but maybe I should…Read more

It’s the classic Nashville formula of building a song around a catch phrase, which the songwriters on Music Row have pretty much run into the ground. I suppose the reason for that is simple: it works. Even outside of country music, that approach is often used to striking effect. “Call Me Maybe”, for example. Who doesn’t get that song stuck in their head after hearing it twice?

But perhaps somewhat typical of me, instead of using this method to spark a light, fun song, I had to go and make it all…Read more

This song is a play on the phrase “The writing is on the wall”, which I later learned is actually a biblical reference. It’s an expression meant to convey the inevitability of something; how no matter what one does, the event can never be stopped from happening. In this song’s case, the event in question is the end of a relationship…or realizing and accepting that a relationship with someone is never going to happen.

Lyrically, it’s a song about giving up. And that’s all it would be, if it weren’t for the…Read more