When I’m not furiously writing Psalms this month, I’m being lured into various FAWM challenges. Every week in February at fawm.org, someone posts a writing prompt, like “Write a song with a body part in it (a la Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie”). This week’s prompt was “Write a song with one note.” Of course, the gold standard example is Carlos Antonio Jobim’s “One Note Samba.” If you don’t know it, you need to listen to it. Right. Now.
I decided to write a song as an homage to Jobim, the great Brazilian composer whose name is synonymous with bossa nova. The homage is self-explanatory if you read the lyrics. Musically, I patterned the song after his, but whereas his B section is a flurry of scales, mine is a rapid-fire one-note melody.
Of course, since it’s nearly Valentine’s Day, my little bonbon of a love song is also an ode of love dedicated to my wife Jen. As you can see from this picture, we are ridiculously cute together and fantastically in love.
Jobim wrote a one-note samba–
a classic full of wit and charm–
but his masterpiece left eleven notes
to be used by other bards.
I’ll lay claim to two of them:
an E flat and a G.
I need twice as many notes:
I’m half as clever as Jobim.
I will use my second note to
tell you you’re the only one who
makes me sing of song of love so
true. For I was just a
lonely one who wondered if I’d
ever find a love just like the
love that I have fin’lly found in you!
That brings me back to my first note;
back to my first theme.
And though it’s not as elegant
as a samba by Jobim,
two notes are better than one note
because they make perfect harmony.
Just like the two of us–you and I–
go together perfectly!
