Maybe it’s not surprising, given what I do in my day job (my 6th academic book was just published in a couple weeks ago), but I do a lot of research in my songwriting. Because a lot of the characters in my songs are not me, and the situations are not mine, I want to make sure that they’re accurate. And that means not only getting the big picture right, but also the little details. I’ve done research for some of my February Album Writing Month songs this month. Some of it is simple. I participated in a tarot challenge in which we were each given a tarot card to write a song about (I got the Star). I don’t know anything about tarot, and had to find out what the card looks like and what it represents in a tarot reading. (It turns out to be a kind of hopeful card, which was nice.) Some of it was a bit more in depth. One of my favorite February songs so far involved another challenge – we were sent to a random Wikipedia page generator, and told to write a song inspired by that page. Mine turned out to be an unknown minor-league hockey player with only the barest of information on the page. So I went looking for more information about him – from college newspapers during his varsity hockey days, from local news coverage of the small-town teams he’s been playing for in recent years. But I know little about hockey. I’ve never played, never watched, and don’t even skate much. So I had to learn more about how the game is played, what the terms are, what it feels like. I looked at glossaries of hockey terms, read some essays about hockey, news coverage of minor-league hockey games to try to get a sense of what they’re like; I even read hockey poetry! And most importantly, I found a consultant – a friend I know through music who is a serious recreational hockey player. She answered some of my specific questions and also gave me feedback on a draft. Most importantly, when she heard the song I came up with, she said that I managed to capture in the chorus how she felt when playing hockey. Which is what I was trying to do; the song is about the joy of playing the game even if you’re not going to make it to the big leagues. That’s what I’m always hoping for in the songs that are about some other person or situation – that I get enough of the details right that it feels real, and that they and other things add up to conveying the important part of the feeling. That’s why I put in the research time. Right now I’m reading a book on Antarctic exploration, because I think it will be useful for another song idea I have but don’t quite know what to do with (and definitely need details of what it was like to be in Antarctica during the age of discovery there). Luckily it’s enjoyable to find these things out. When I do research for a song I learn much much more about the situation than ever makes it into the song but I suspect it’s not unlike an actor figuring out the backstory for her character. Knowing all of that information, even if it’s not used in an explicitly way, makes the story fuller – I’m sure it informs, even in subtle ways, the things that do make it into the song. They help create that feeling that I’m hoping will ring true to the people who have actual experience with whatever it is I’m writing about.