This is a bit long, but I believe you’ll find it interesting so please bear with me for a few moments.
In Carrie Underwood’s 18-year career, her biggest hit is still one of her earliest releases, “Before He Cheats,” her Lover’s Revenge song from her 2005 debut album. It tells of a woman finding her boyfriend cheating so she destroys his vehicle. Even before being released as a single, it had begun to climb the country charts, and ultimately “The song became an enormous crossover success, topping the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for five consecutive weeks, reaching the top five on the Billboard Adult Top 40 chart, and becoming a top ten hit on the Billboard Mainstream Top 40 and Adult Contemporary charts. On the Billboard Hot 100 chart, ‘Before He Cheats’ reached number eight and achieved a longevity of 64 consecutive weeks on the chart, making it the eighth [sic] longest-charting single in the history of the Hot 100 chart.”
The Lover’s Revenge song that’s even more remarkable is Gabby Barrett’s “I Hope,” her first independent release to streaming services in January 2019. The year before, at 18, she had been eliminated in third place on American Idol and gone to Nashville to make the rounds of the labels in an attempt to get signed, but she found no one interested. Working on her own with two young songwriters, they came up with “I Hope” about a woman who is apparently wishing her ex well with his new romance, but then reveals the true theme when she sings “And then I hope she cheats, like you did on me.”
Again, listeners worldwide loved the song which sounds like a sappy love song only to suddenly reveal that it’s actually a woman getting Lover’s Revenge. It did so well as an independent release on the streaming sites that the labels that had rejected her engaged in a bidding war to sign her and in May 2019, after being invited to sing “I Hope” on a return guest appearance on American Idol (the previous season’s top 2 not invited back and Ryan Seacrest calling her a “superstar”), she announced to the audience that she was “now an artist for Warner Music Nashville,” the top label that signed her. They put together her debut studio album, Goldmine, and released I Hope as her debut single from it on July 29, 2019.
“After the single reached number one and its popularity on streaming services began to skyrocket, American singer-songwriter Charlie Puth messaged Barrett on Instagram expressing how much he loved the song and wanted to remix it with him singing parts. After the remix was released on April 17, 2020, ...it received a Country Music Association Award for Single of the Year nomination at the 54th Annual Country Music Association Awards. The song is certified 7× Platinum in the United States, 8× Platinum in Canada, and Silver in the United Kingdom. It has also been hailed as a crossover hit, topping the Billboard Country Airplay, Adult Pop Songs and all-format Radio Songs charts and becoming the best-selling country song of 2020 in the United States, as well as the third-bestselling country and adult contemporary song of 2021 in the US. It spent 62 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100.”
As Gabby has said, “when the teeth come out, it’s something that really grabs people.”
Another long-lasting Lover’s Revenge hit song is Carly Simon’s "You’re So Vain." In 2015, 43 years after the song’s release, the president of NBC Sports, Dick Ebersol, paid $50,000 at a charity auction to be told the secret of who the song was about with the stipulation that he could only reveal the first letter of the person’s name.
The lyrics for Daneliya’s Lover’s Revenge song, “Words of Love,” are on another tab, as is the score. The song takes the theme to a new and more satisfying level for the listeners. While earlier hit songs had the woman already cheated on to make them take revenge, "Words of Love" reveals that the woman already knew he was lying to her and just pretended to believe his lovely promises and accept his dreams of “naughty desires,” only to make his expectations horribly collapse when he rushes to her door and she opens it to reveal who she’s brought with her to greet him - the three other women he was keeping secret for good reason. She reveals then how she knew he was lying, and the feelings of herself and the others for what he did – not good. The break has her sing underneath the instrumental some poking words and she finishes the outro with “Ah, revenge can be sweet, So I lied back to you…” repeating the lines how she appeared open to his desires.
Every woman who hears it is going to be punching the air in satisfaction, increasing Daneliya’s appeal to young women everywhere, while the men will be glad it never happened to them.
The structure of the song is not standard pop with verses and a chorus that just repeats. It’s actually more of a complete story told in the manner of Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Joe,” which consists of five verses, all of them ending with variations of things that happened on the Tallahatchie Bridge.
"Ode to Billy Joe" was a huge surprise hit when released in July 1967 as Gentry’s first record. Originally presented as a demo to Del-Fi records in LA, they turned it down. Capitol records then liked Gentry’s other demo song, Mississippi Delta, and decided to put “Ode to Billy Joe,” with some sprucing up, as it’s B-side.
“A&R man Kelly Gordon handed the tape to arranger Jimmie Haskell for the changes.” Haskell has related, “I asked Kelly, ‘What do you want me to do?’ He said, ‘Just put some strings on it so we won’t be embarrassed. No one will ever hear it anyway.’ The song sounded to me like a movie—those wonderful lyrics. I had a small group of strings—two cellos and four violins to fit her guitar-playing. I was branching out in my own head for the first time, creating something that I liked because we thought no one was ever gonna hear it.”
“After being edited to 4:48 from its original 7-minute length, the finished product was released by Capitol Records as the B side of a 45 rpm, opposite the song ‘Mississippi Delta.’ B sides are usually ignored, but the DJs thought differently, flipped it over and sent “Ode to Billie Joe” up the charts.” Capitol Records subsequently claimed it was released as the A-side, apparently to avoid the embarrassment of having dismissed what became such a tremendous hit that it was made into a movie in 1976. “For a song that wasn’t expected to be heard, it made a huge impression, bumping the Beatles’ ‘All You Need is Love’ from the number one spot on the Billboard chart and sitting there for four weeks. ‘Ode to Billie Joe’ garnered eight Grammy nominations, including three wins for Gentry and one well-deserved win for Jimmie Haskell’s arrangement.”
Speaking of arrangement, “Words of Love” needs that. I am primarily a writer and the musical notation is composed of only a melody without timing or chords. Daneliya improves every song she sings by her innate musical sense and there’s no doubt she’ll do the same for this. It’s in the key of F major so it will be no problem for a musician to add chord progressions. There’s also a break for which I‘ve only written a simple melody of Daneliya softly singing the taunt underneath the break, which I’d like to be a driving instrumental that leads into the outro verse. If Daneliya wishes to add herself as one of the writer’s, that’s fine. I want nothing up front for the song, only that the songwriter royalties go to my son, Adam.
While Daneliya wisely is doing music personal to her, there’s still room for “Words of Love.” As Carrie Underwood said in talking about “Before He Cheats,” where she destroys the cheater’s car in revenge: "I wouldn't recommend doing any property damage, though. I'm a 'let it go, move on' kind of person.'" But listeners worldwide loved it, one of her first releases yet still her biggest hit. And I strongly believe that Daneliya’s fans worldwide will embrace her Lover’s Revenge song while understanding that it’s not personal to her experience.
Of course it’s impossible to know if any song is a sure thing, but, judging by history, I feel that if Daneliya performs “Words of Love,” everyone better be prepared for a rocket ride.
The lyric sheet is under its own tab, with another tab having a link to the score with lyrics that plays on YouTube, the easiest way to review it. There is also a tab with links to Musescore which plays the basic melody showing the lyrics. Musescore can also be opened simply by typing in a browser musescore.com and then typing in the search box, brutyre. That will open up six compositions and clicking on "Words of Love" will open it so you can play it by clicking on the black arrow at the top left. Oddly, Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers are bad for uploading to Musescore as they often fail to show the score even though they’ll play the score. Firefox always opens Musescore songs, so it would be best to use Firefox. You can also use this link to open my file in musescore: https://musescore.com/sheetmusic?text=brutyre Thanks for your consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Bruce Macintyre (702) 372-2830 [email protected] Unit 5 1905 Canterbury Ln. Sun City Center, FL 33573