Chords for Andrew Bird’s Musical Evolution | The New Yorker

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[C] _ _ [G] _ I used to look [C] forward to boring situations, [D] and that's led to a lot of my [C] lyric writing,
[G] just like _ _ hours and hours of time to have fun with words. _ _ _
And now there's certainly [D] more urgency just [C] because life is [G] so full.
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_ _ One of my favorite [Em] songwriting teams, [Dm] the Hanson family, _ [Am]
[Em] were saying, this guy came
up to them after the show and said, _ [G] look, I got three kids.
[Em] Can you just tell me what the song's about? _ _
I don't [D] have room in my life [G] to ponder these things.
Just I need the footnotes. _
_ _ _ _ You know, [Em] I haven't lost my [C] sense of [Em] fun.
[A] _ It's just [C] now I'm interested [Em] in more [G] plain spoken writing.
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I started [G] when I was four, [F#] four years old, [C] and my mom _ [A] decided I should play violin. _
_ _ [Em] _ [F#] I learned completely by ear [G] through the Suzuki [Am]
method.
[G] The whole idea is you learn [Am] it like you're learning language.
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And that's still [G] the way I work today.
It's [A] very much created [G] the kind of musician that I [C] am today.
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When I'm playing, I [Bm] will go [Am] to [Em] sing, and I'll play, or I'll go to [G] play, and I'll whistle.
_ It's [C] all coming from the same place and it's [G] part of the same stream. _
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_ _ _ Play like this, _ or like _ [D] _
that.
_ _ [Em] _ _ _
_ _ Ah, OK. _
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[F] The [Em] song Chemical Switches, which is a [B] fairly stripped down song on the record.
[F#] I started off [Em] writing that song [F] _ _ _
[C] with intent [D] _ [G] to say this or that.
[F] But I had a [C] very, very strong melody coming into it that didn't want to [A] yield.
I keep [G] hearing a [Am] vicious rumor.
And so I had to [F] go, I just had to give up.
And [G] _ [F] I [Em] just went into the shower and started speaking in [Am] tongues and intoning [Em] things.
And then [F] pulling up the meaning from my subconscious and piecing it all together.
[G] Like, that's the way I used to [C] work more in the past.
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Going with [C] tone over meaning at [G] first.
But the [B] meaning reveals itself because there's a reason why you thought of that particular word.
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But for this record, for me, [Em] there's a lot more [Am] songs that really do [C] stick to the message.
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_ [F] _ [G] _ _ Over [C] the years people say, music is math.
No [F] it's not.
_ It's anything but.
It's the antidote [C] to math.
_ _ I've always been unmethodical, intuitive, soaking things up by [Am] osmosis.
And I take that as far as I can [F] possibly go.
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I find [D] it a messy [Gm] [Em] process. _ _
It's _ _ _ _
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the same reason I don't like to read music or look at charts, even though we have charts scattered on the floor.
I don't look at them _ because it is a middleman between me and what has to get done. _
Between me and the audience. _ _
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I think younger people think that [A] _
[C] it's over when you do that.
Like, [F#] _
the romance [A] is over when you settle [D] down.
_ _ [G#] It's like, man, it's [Am] just beginning.
You [A] don't even know.
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It's [Gm] just beginning. _ _
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