I’ve been working on a new song and played it the other night right after my husband, Bob, returned from his daily five-mile walk. He had gone straight to his computer but I was hoping he was listening.
“What do you think?” I said, turning toward him from the piano bench.
He said in a meditative, almost dazed way, “I like it. It has that classic...I feel like I’ve heard it before. The melody? The chord changes?” Uh-oh, someone else’s song? One of my own songs? “What’s that bridges?” he continued, nonsensically (it seemed).
I thought he must be talking about the song’s bridge and that maybe that was what sounded familiar to him, but before I could ask about this, he said, “That Bridges in the movie about the saloon singer?”
I immediately thought of The Fabulous Baker Boys, with Beau and Jeff Bridges. “Oh, the Bridges brothers, where one plays the piano—”
He said, “No, the guy that plays the dive bars."
“Crazy Heart, you mean. Jeff Bridges."
“Jeff Bridges! He’s playing a song for someone, and she says, it sounds like I've heard it before. And he says, that's when you know you have a great song, when people think it's always been around.”
Bob then decided to look for the movie dialogue (less confusing than our own!), between Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal, on imdb:
Bad Blake: [...strumming guitar lightly] You know that song? Hmm?
Jean Craddock: I can't remember who did it.
Bad Blake: That's the way it is with the good ones, you're sure you've heard them before.
Jean Craddock: You wrote that?
Bad Blake: Yes ma'am, just now.
I did not remember this at all, but what a great thing to say (by Bob, I mean, but Bad Blake too)!