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Credits: Sports and Music Photographer via Flickr<\/p>\n
Mon 11 August 2025 19:30, UK <\/p>\n
How does one learn how to write a pop song? You could easily look at The Beatles\u2019 tunes to write something upbeat, but there\u2019s no way anyone can get their first hit by copying any one band. The audience needs to relate to the person, and Don Henley<\/a> knew that better than anyone.<\/p>\n Throughout Eagles\u2019 career, Henley was always the one looking at the bigger picture whenever he wrote his lyrics. Nothing he ever did was about talking down to anyone, and even when he did have some preaching to do about the environment or the way Hollywood was looking for, he\u2019s not one to look and pass judgment. He\u2019s really there to observe, but who wants to be spoken to about how what they\u2019re doing is bad?<\/p>\n No one comes to a song to be judged, and while Bob Dylan might be the one person in the world who could get away with something like that, it wasn\u2019t like Henley was always going in that direction. He had \u2018Desperado\u2019 under his belt, but there were also songs like \u2018Best of My Love\u2019 that were all about his own struggles with romance or his problems with his place in the world on \u2018New Kid in Town\u2019.<\/p>\n In fact, most of his personal songs are where fans get that punch in the gut. \u2018Wasted Time\u2019 is one of the most depressing breakup songs to come out of country-rock, \u2018Boys of Summer\u2019 is a great ode to love lost, and \u2018A Month of Sundays\u2019 is a look at the humble farmer watching the love of his life walk away. But have you noticed anything that these songs have in common? None of them depict someone being the most chipper person in the world.<\/p>\n A lot of them are more than a little bit sad, but as far as Henley\u2019s concerned, those are the best kind of songs that people can hope to write, saying<\/a>, \u201cI think the best songs are sad songs. I don\u2019t enjoy happy little songs. Sad songs, all the great romantic songs throughout history, from Frank Sinatra to Paul McCartney, every great songwriter does his best work writing sad songs. You can only hear \u2018You Are My Sunshine\u2019 so many times. On the other hand I could listen to \u2018Yesterday\u2019 by Paul McCartney over and over and over again.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s certainly true for someone like McCartney. For someone who seems to be one of the most optimistic men on the face of Earth, some of the most earnest songs that he ever wrote have had to do with the sour side of life, whether that\u2019s processing John Lennon\u2019s death on \u2018Here Today\u2019 or his writing as the Beatles were about to break up like \u2018The Long and Winding Road\u2019 and \u2018Let It Be\u2019.<\/p>\n Which is also half the reason why a lot of great goth acts work so well. People may be turned off by all the black eyeliner that Robert Smith piles on whenever he performs, but his songs of devotion on \u2018Just Like Heaven\u2019 still have a better gut punch than any other 1980s song. And while Henley traded in the black eyeliner for a cowboy hat half the time, they all speak the same language. <\/p>\n