“The song is not yours. The moment you write it, it becomes another thing. It goes off and has a life of its own. It grows up. It gets a job. It starts smoking. It has its own life.” - G.H.
Glen Hansard is an outstanding musician, I loved the film Once which introduced me to him. A credit to Ireland. I don't know why he is not more popular across the world.
Thank you Glen! Your words are inspiring! After watching half hour of this video I needed to stop and immediately started to play and sing some of my unfinished songs with some fresh ideas. Now I cant't wait for the rest. :) Greetings from Poland!
So glad to hear from you, Glen. I'm glad you're doing well and that you get to spend quality time with your family. Thank you so much for your wonderful music and words of wisdom!
Glen is so genuine a person that he just shares whatever he is and has been thinking about, same as his songs. It's almost like seeing me talking to myself (except what he says is valuable 😂)
Thank you so much from 3 years later, Glen! Your wonder and love for expression is contagious. Whatever we are staring down in this birthing of a new world may we do it wide eyed holding hands.
Hello Glen, thanks very much for posting this video. I’m a huge fan of your music and it is great to hear how you create these songs, particularly so as I play guitar and (attemp) to sing myself. Recently I wrote a poem, for the first time in my life (& I’m 60!) and was sure there was also a song in it, there was - and now I am fascinated and besotted with the process! My song is a simple one about many holidays spent around the Sligo area, it is a distillation of years of fond memories, so important to me. It has also opened the door to thoughts of other songs, you’ll know the feeling. I did enjoy how you told the stories too, diverting down rabbit holes from the comments - may title this video ‘Didn’t he Ramble’ 😊 I’m now watching your discussion with Colin Davis (who I used to work with in a design company years ago!), he’s a wonderful artist, love his work. I live near Belfast and have only saw your gigs twice now, once at Ulster Hall a couple years ago, just before Christmas, then last year in the Grand Opera House. Both concerts a transcendental evening of magic, so thank you for that again. Learning a few of your songs to sing too, particularly love ‘Winning Streak’. Hope to see you again next time you’re playing Belfast. Strength & length of days to you & yours.
Being able to attend your concert and talk to you at stage door exactly a year ago today is my greatest joy of the entire 2019. Thank you for your music!
So happy you are in the world Glen and I got lucky to be on this planet at the same time as you. Blessed to be able to enjoy your music and energy throughout my own life, throughout these times. Le grá.
I love this Glen. Letting myself get out of my own way is the hardest for me. Sometimes I feel like songs need to be super complicated or have highly intricate and unique guitar parts, but they really don't. Just listen to the song in you and let it go where it wants
So elated you put the Instagram session here on RU-vid, Glen! I have my notes but I wanted to rewatch and someone, somewhere, mentioned your talks usually ended up here. Thank you, Thank you.
I trully enjoyed this generous and gracious share which Im ineffably grateful for! You're the sage of authentic songwriting in my humble estimates, and the impact your movie "Once" had on me at age 13, made me pick up the guitar, adding qualities and depth to my character, as music brought about deeper value and meaning in my life, and set me off on this lifetime journey of seeking truth, while sculpting away the layers of confusion every day, in getting to know and rediscovering myself. ❤ You're truly one of the patriarch images in my life that I've learned so much from, what it is and how to be a man and a creator. 🙏 Thank you - for setting an example of the father I never got to physically have, and one that I continously ought and strive becoming. 🙇♂️🔥
I love this man I got to harmonise with him at Union Chapel. And he was kind enough to sign my cd with. To Steve thanks for singing like a bird Glen.... It's on YT somewhere......what a absolute gent xxxxx
Thank you very much for your beautiful songs. I first saw you in The Commitments. I love that movie. I lost track of you until my son in law re-introduced me to your beautiful music. He is a big fan and he has visited a lot of your concerts in Europe. We visited a concert together in Tivoli in Utrecht a few years ago and a concert in Carré in Amsterdam last week. Fantastic concert. Loved it. Greetings from The Netherlands.
47:33 the first time I wrote, I was absolutely stuck with a blank piece of paper and a pencil that I regularly misplaced. That one true line that came out eventually? "Every time I try to write It always turns out utter shite!" I proceeded to write a short poem about "pencil goblins" that keep showing up to ruin my attempts at "art", only to realise that the only thing holding me back was myself (I was 16 so all this was profoundly deep to me at the time)
Hey Glen! Thanks so much for putting up these gems out here and for being such a beautiful soul! 💗 It would be SO AWESOME if you could put up videos of you playing the acoustic versions of those treasures from The Frames (like Mighty sword, Neath the beaches), fly fly.. Would love and cherish them till the end! 💗💚
Glen, as of the last week I’ve only just discovered your music and I’m loving it. Thank you! You’re vid is incredibly insightful and for that I’m grateful. However, I can’t help listening to the birdsong outside your window.
that was exactly the video i needed right now. i have the urge to write songs but it feels like a sneeze that wont come out.hopefully i will let your words help me. thanks a million.
I simplify the types of songs into 2 types, and you really need to know which of these 2 your song is, and it informs a lot of the decisions, especially on the production side. These 2 types of songs are (in generic terms) 1. Songs that make you move & 2. Songs that make you cry. And its possible to do both in a song (bohemian rhapsody, stairway to heaven)
I really enjoyed this video. I appreciated the Hemingway reference and would love to hear more about Glen's favorite writers. Which Martin model guitar is that in most of the video?
Hi Glen, you have such energy about you. So modist so inspiring and uplifting. I would like to do a duet with you at some stage as it would be a dream come true. You're music has been important on my journey thank you 🙏🙏🙏
Half-rhyme... Emily Dickinson's big innovation. I write a lot of poetry, and some songs... but poetry has advanced so far without the aid of music that it has other concerns these days. Poems are easier to write than songs, for me... and some poems can make good songs... but a good song is so singular that it rarely has the same power in only being read on paper, from a text (actually that's the thing I have to get over, which is all the neologisms in the poetry, and how to get them into song, without it seeming gimmicky... which could be to say; the seeming simplicity of the song-lyric has a lot to teach this kind of poetic impulse?) 'Raglan Road...' is that rare bird that (thanks to Luke) can cover the two categories triumphantly. That's an anomaly, I'd say. Actually... I'd venture the thought that one's idea of 'a song' and or 'a poem' is the perfect thing to destroy the successful attempt at writing either, or attempting to 'lash a poem' or 'lyrics' to chords (as John Spillane would say) but I'm even unsure about that statement. I love the 'mumbo jumbo' example! (very 'Finnegans Wake' hehe). And the Springsteen thing; another song about not being able to write a song that I love is Neil Young's 'Borrowed Tune' (from 'Tonight's the Night', he even says where he stole the tune from in the song... haha). I think there's a word-corollary for Duende in the Welsh; Hiraeth (and the Koreans have 'Han', not to be confused with the Chinese racial meaning)... but I don't know if it fits exactly... deep sorrow/yearning etc. I don't know if there's a definition in the Irish for the same. Anyway, great stuff, thanks!
very interesting ,, thanks for that ,,, iv songs that im never going to do anything with ,, the heart has gone out of me trying to get new ones out there ,, at 56 years of age im kinda gone pass it :) ,, anyways ,,, enjoyed your talk ,, thanks bud ,,
Half-rhyme... Emily Dickinson's big innovation. I write a lot of poetry, and some songs... but poetry has advanced so far without the aid of music that it has other concerns these days. Poems are easier to write than songs, for me... and some poems can make good songs... but a good song is so singular that it rarely has the same power in only being read on paper, from a text (actually that's the thing I have to get over, which is all the neologisms in the poetry, and how to get them into song, without it seeming gimmicky... which could be to say; the seeming simplicity of the song-lyric has a lot to teach this kind of poetic impulse?) 'Raglan Road...' is that rare bird that (thanks to Luke) can cover the two categories triumphantly. That's an anomaly, I'd say. Actually... I'd venture the thought that one's idea of 'a song' and or 'a poem' is the perfect thing to destroy the successful attempt at writing either, or attempting to 'lash a poem' or 'lyrics' to chords (as John Spillane would say) but I'm even unsure about that statement. Anyway, good stuff... and I love the 'mumbo jumbo' example! (very 'Finnegans Wake' hehe). And the Springsteen thing; another song about not being able to write a song that I love is Neil Young's 'Borrowed Tune' (from 'Tonight's the Night', he even says where he stole the tune from in the song... haha)
