Thursday, February 12, 2009

All or Nothing at All

I'm not in the mood for any of my iTunes playlists or for shuffle mode so I'm working my way through my music by title, alphabetically. (I don't intend to work my way to the end for reasons I've discussed here.) Simple, no?

But I haven't gone far when I realized a great many songs start with the word "All:"

All About Soul Billy Joel
All Around The World Paul Simon
All I've Got To Do The Beatles
All I Want Joni Mitchell
All I Want Is You U2
All My Loving The Beatles (Two versions.)
All Around The World Electric Light Orchestra
All That Heaven Will Allow Bruce Springsteen
All That I'm Good For Hem (Two versions.)
All The Pretty Horses Hem
All The Road Running Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris
All This Time Sting
All Together Now The Beatles
All You Need Is Love The Beatles (Three versions!)
All You Want Dido

That's only fifteen tracks out of 2,000 but a quick scan of my other titles shows no other trend like this. And it seems like songwriters are pretty sure of themselves: it's either all or nothing at all, I have no songs titles beginning with the word "Some." (Okay, I have a few that begin with "Something" but that doesn't count.) Substitute the word "All" with "Some" and the titles above are very different.

Good writers know the importance of choosing the right word.

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