Ayca Cavas is blabbing from Kaikoura, New Zealand.

Princess you’re drowning, hiding your cries

Waves in your pillow, tide in the eyes

Heros are gone, but I’m here, would you please

Know that this frog is the prince

Told you he’s useless, right from the start

Cause he was used to breaking your heart

Couldn’t believe what you said as you winced:

“Know that this frog is the prince”

What can I do, I am helpless

Watching you choosing those men

Hiding my love, as I’m playing your friend

Princess you’re sleepy, come to my arms

Dream that my kisses are waking you up

Trust that I’ll love you as love will exist

Just wait till our story begins, and…

Know that this frog is the prince

Music: Berklee Online

…………………………

This was the first song I was given at Writing Lyrics to Music. The melody is set in 3/4 time. When I first listened it, it felt like a lullaby, like someone is whispering a story to another person in bed, while caressing the hair or wiping the tears…

I sticked to my first feeling and constructed an outline around that idea. But of course I didn’t choose to go along with a dad and his daughter, but instead I wanted to create a story about a man and his best friend, whom he is secretly in love with. 

What I lacked in this picture was the hook, of course. (A little insider info: A hook is generally the title of any song, which is repeated at least once in the chorus section. But this song didn’t have the classic “verse + chorus + bridge + chorus” structure, rather it had a verse + verse + verse structure, so the hook should be at the last line of each verse. A very god example for this kind of song structure is Paul Simon’s “Still Crazy After All These Years”)

I had a bed, two lovers, and a lullaby, so I thought about a story that would fit into this picture. I had translated “The Frog Prince” to Turkish ten years ago when I was studying at the university, it was an adult version, about women who think they had married a prince, but after some years they wake up and realize in fact they were married a frog!

And even when I was a child, I always liked the idea of falling in love with a frog, not because I like them, but because I believed I had the power of turning it to a prince : P 
So I decided on this hook: Frog is the prince. 

I am very happy about this song. First, I finally wrote a song about something I personally love, The Frog Prince. And I also be able to construct the story in such a way that each time the hook is repeated within the song, it means something different. e.g. At the end of verse 1, “frog is the prince” refers to the boy who is there with her at the moment but she actually wants a hero, her ex-boy friend, to be near her bed. At the end of second verse, “frog is the prince” is a  statement she had made about her ex-boy friend, and lastly at the end of third verse, “frog is the prince” again our boy who is secretly in love with her but it carries this Frog Prince effect more since he is trying to convince her that he may not be her first choice, he may not be the prince charming by looks, but actually he will turn to a prince when she starts loving him. Oh, how romantic! Ehehehee. 

Anyway, one last good thing I had done unconsciously, but then realized what I had done is, at the second line of the last verse, the notes on the sheet were rising to their highest level, so, I matched up the highest note with a nice and appropriate word “up” (Dream that my kisses are waking you up), so it is a lovely prosody; an up note is going nicely with an up word. 

A tap at the back.