Meet Michelle Carter and "The infinite melancholy of the urban horse" original song

"The infinite melancholy of the urban horse"

I have great admiration for anyone who can write their own songs - and play them. Well, meet Michelle Carter, of Yorkshire. She got a ukulele for her 30th birthday and has fallen in love with playing - and song-writing.

She writes "I've just been messing about with writing songs to try and make my husband laugh.... I'm currently writing up my PhD so playing the ukulele is a brilliant way to engage a different part of my brain when I've just lost the plot looking at statistics all day, it's also an excellent way to procrastinate when I can't be bothered to write anything!"

A girl after my own heart, there, then!

She says that this song was inspired by a story in the Yorkshire Evening Post (online) about a horse that was found living in a terraced house in Armley in Leeds. "Not to be confused with other horse related songs such as "wild horses", "crazy horses" and "my lovely horse"."

Michelle has posted three of her songs on Youtube. There is something in her style and way with words that reminds me of Victoria Wood and of Jake Thackray..... remember him? The great American songwriter, too - Tom Lehrer. Listen to her songs, and see what you think.....

I asked Michelle how she went about writing her songs. This is what she said:

"I have no idea how I wrote the songs to be honest usually just strumming and messing around. So with urban horse, I’d had the idea that this could be an amusing concept and then I started strumming some chords that sounded good together and the lyrics came after that. I had an idea for a new song the other day and wrote some notes but I found it impossible to write anything without strumming the chords first. The song about washing up came after my husband James and I were watching Jamie Oliver’s 30 minute meals and he turned to me completely seriously and said “I bet he doesn’t do his own washing up” and it just really made me laugh, because he looked like he was really troubled by that thought. So for me it goes idea, chords and then lyrics last."

Other songs by Michelle Carter "Washing Up" and "By the Time I'm Thirty"

Good luck, Michelle, with your Phd.... but also, and especially with your songs.

Whatever else you do - keep 'em comin'!