Song about/for my abusive narcissistic mother, who throughout my entire life has been trying to destroy anything dear to me, any interest, hobby, opportunity etc, just because I care about it (innocent, legal stuff).

It’s always been all about her - claiming my “abominable” life-choices of comfortable, modest clothing, nerdiness, geeky hobbies and interests, aversion to destructive behaviors and “wrong crowds”, and even the direction I peel vegetables (!), rather than “conforming” to shallow standards of “stylish”, revealing clothes, jewelry, makeup, so-called “girly” interest, dating, partying etc, made HER look bad, all the while taking the credit for the few meager, controlled successes she hadn’t deprived me of. She’d keep claiming I’m nothing without her, not even human, that I depend on her and need her to be in charge of me. When I informed her I was moving out, she mocked me and said I wouldn’t survive one day on my own and would come running right back.

Years later, unhappy that despite her relentless efforts she couldn’t convince me to go back to her evil clutches, she kidnapped me, then used her connections as a government official to commission a shrink who never met me to falsely "diagnose" me with all kinda stuff she made up solely based on her say-so, certify me as an invalid in effort to gain conservatorship and control over me. Her plan (which thankfully never came to fruition as I managed to escape before she gained conservatorship) was to lock me up and pump me full of drugs I don't need for conditions I don't have (that way, in her words, she’d “always know where I am and what I’m doing”), all the while reaping my "disability" benefits and praise and sympathy for having to put up with me. (Side note, I actually have a verifiable clean bill of mental health)

I wrote this song while being my mother’s prisoner, having lost all hope of ever being able to escape & rebuild a life for myself. Being an expert liar, she’d keep telling everyone what a loving, caring mother she is and how I’m severely mental and desperately need her help, all she’s doing “for me” etc, getting everyone on her side and I had no one to turn to, no one would listen to me as I don’t have her reputation, connections, credentials, or confidence. She and her pet shrink would keep trying to make me "accept" the "fact" that I’m an invalid and require "treatment" and must surrender to my mother's will as I'm "unfit" to decide for and take care of myself, that my unwillingness to be the person my mother wanted me to be and furthermore my unwillingness to maintain a relationship with her (the toxic beast who kidnapped me and destroyed everything I’d worked for) is proof of “impaired judgment”, and that being a zombie locked up in a mental institution is the only life I'm fit for, that this is who I am and that is all I’m worth and all I have to aspire to. One thing that stuck with me is a time during all those months, when I told about my situation to some online friends (because she had poisoned everyone in my life against me and my distant online contacts were all I had left), and one just replied, “endure”… and all I could think was, what for. This is what this song is about.

Thankfully, after almost a year as her prisoner, I did manage to escape and become a productive member of society.

Song written and performed by Hawkbaby #1.

First of all: this song is historical, not partisan or political, so please do not use it for such purposes. It pertains to the events of Bloody Tuesday on June 9, 1964 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

We were watching a movie about Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, and Hawkbaby #1 was really touched and inspired by the events of Bloody Tuesday and wrote this song. Obviously he wasn’t there and neither was I, so it’s probably not 100% historically accurate.

I helped some with the melody... then he picked the instruments and I composed. He’s pretty tone-deaf so this is full-on auto-tune LOL… still sounds a zillion times better than me though.

Bloody Tuesday

Bloody Tuesday - song by Hawkbaby #1

Collaboration song... Hawkbaby #1 made up the melody, I wrote most of the lyrics (he wrote 2 lines). Performed by the Hawkbabies.

Hawkbaby #1 came up with this little melody he named "bells are ringing" and played it to his piano teacher. She really liked it and said it reminded her of Church bells, and Hawkbaby #1 said it reminded him of sleigh bells.

So later on I was like "it really is a nice melody, maybe you should try putting lyrics to it." Buuuut he said he had no clue what, so I was like "here let me start you off with a little idea..."

So I just came up with the simplest, cheesiest lines: "Sleigh bells are ringing and people are singing."

He makes a face and goes "that's lame."

So I shrug and go back to what I was doing, then turn around and go "Sleigh bells are ringing and people are singing about all the joy that this season is bringing them"

He jumps with his eyes all wide and goes "YES!"

...well and that's how it all started... of course once my wheels started turning the rest of the lyrics followed and he left the lyrics to me anyway.

For the composition he initially wanted me to use only bell sounds (like my rain song composition that was only mallet sounds) but I added in choir sounds because... "sleigh bells are ringing and people are singing". So it's bells, choir, and drums (Hawkbabies approved). Course the vocals are 100% auto-tune which sadly makes them sound all wonky O.o

Really it's just a super wholesome, cheerful little Christmas song about bells and music at Christmastime.

Melody (c) Hawkbaby #1
Lyrics (c) Shaunie Littlehawk (yours truly)

Christmas Bells Are Ringing

Song written and performed by Hawkbaby #1, inspired by a moth he found. He wrote the lyrics and melody, then picked the instruments and I composed. His melodies tend to be very linear and this one originally had all quarter notes and only 2 chords. I helped him give the melody some rhythm and did my best to spice up the chords, hope it doesn't sound too bad... again the auto-tune makes it sound like we recorded in a tin can though.

Flying High  Flying Free

Flying High Flying Free - song by Hawkbaby #1

Song written and performed by me…

I wrote this song in the beginning of 2nd grade (back when I could still sing), I was 6 going on 7. It was the first rain of that fall. When it stopped raining, the teacher took our class outside to look around after the rain and I just got so excited and inspired and wrote this song soon after we went back inside.

In all honesty, there wasn’t actually a rainbow that day, nor was it cold enough to even require a jacket, and it was really just a light, wimpy first-rain-of-the-season that only lasted a few minutes. I just got super excited and went all out LOL.

The first line was most likely subconsciously inspired by the “April showers” song in the Bambi movie, which I watched a few years earlier… I only found that out many years after writing this song when I watched the Bambi movie again.

Obviously the lyrics are very childish, but I kinda like their innocence and wholesomeness. The melody isn’t too bad I guess… the instrumental arrangement is recent because I had to come up with one in order to record it, originally it only had the melody but no instrumentals (I wrote it before I even started learning any instruments).

Back in 3rd grade I sang this song in my audition for some children’s singing show thing. At the audition, their piano guy tried to accompany my singing on the piano, it was very basic staccato chords f-ac-c-ac-f-ac-c-ac etc… then they stopped me in the middle and asked me to sing a well-known song for the piano guy to play, so I sang whatever was the most popular song that year (which all the other auditioning kids sang too LOL). But ever since then I kept associating this song with the staccato piano chord sound, even though it sounded so “preschool music class” and not at all like an actual musical composition. Inside my brain it was stuck to this song like glue and it was kinda hard to force myself to break away from it in order to come up with this little composition.

Also nothing against piano, but it feels like more of a mallet song anyway, so I basically gathered up some virtual mallet instruments and put together something very simple, there’s no chords but rather just a bunch of different melodies layered on top of each other. I was trying my best to create music that sounded “rainy”, hope I did a good job…

Apologies for my terrible voice (never-ending allergies make my nose and throat permanently stuffy and sore O.o ) which is only made worse by my poor recording equipment and abysmal sound editing skills…

Song by Shaunie Littlehawk (yours truly)

The Rain

Song written and performed by Hawkbaby #2. She wrote the lyrics and melody, then picked up instruments and I composed to the best of my ability... all that auto-tune makes it sound like we recorded in a tin can LOL.

Birdsong

Birdsong - song by Hawkbaby #2

Song written and performed by me.

If anyone is familiar with Bruce Timm's DCAU, I wrote this song about John & Shayera from the Justice League show, it’s based on their leitmotif from JL/JLU (with a teensy bit of the Ancient History variant).

Way back when, while browsing online, I came across a page that listed the Justice League/JLU leitmotifs and where they appear. The second I got to the mention of Hawkgirl & Green Lantern’s love leitmotif, the thing just got stuck in my head and wouldn’t get out (now let’s all pause for a moment to appreciate the magnitude of geekiness it takes to not only get my favorite couple’s leitmotif stuck in my head, but also know what it is off the top of my head). The “creative process” went like this…

Next morning at work…

Me: *go about my day*

My brain: *plays the HG/GL leitmotif on a loop*

Me: *go about my day*

My brain: *plays the HG/GL leitmotif on a loop* …you make it hard to keep pretending, don’t you know I crave you more with every breath I take? Even though I know without a doubt this story has no happy ending-

Me: Whoa where did THAT come from?!?!

My brain: this tune is singing to me. I must write this song.

Me: I’m in the middle of work and don’t even have a pen and paper *go about my day*

My brain: *plays the HG/GL leitmotif on a loop* …you make it hard to keep pretending, don’t you know I crave you more with every breath I take? Even though I know without a doubt this story has no happy ending-

Me: *go about my day*

My brain: *plays the HG/GL leitmotif on a loop* …you make it hard to keep pretending, don’t you know I crave you more with every breath I take? Even though-

Another part of my brain: WHEN THE MOMENT COMES, WHEN THE SECRET’S OUT, WHEN MY FEELINGS ARE THE ONLY THING I’VE NEVER LIED ABOUT-

Me: OKAY BRAIN! YOU WIN! GO AHEAD!

Well and this song pretty much wrote itself (but I still take full credit)…

Obviously it’s not my voice that should be singing this (or anything really… sorry O.o ), especially with my allergies wrecking my throat for the last couple months and my voice going in and out… my “recording studio” was my cramped little closet which isn’t even a walk-in closet, I had to dump everything out… my microphone is a relic I found at Goodwill along with instructions for setup on Windows XP, and would keep distorting when I’d hit the high notes so I had to keep choking my already messed up voice… and sadly I don’t have enough skills to edit/filter it and make it sound less atrocious. BUT this song’s been rattling in my head for so long, just had to get it out, voice or no voice LOL. Maybe if someone high enough up the food chain watches this, they’ll get Maria Canals-Barrera to sing it with the actual Hawkgirl voice and fix this travesty.

The original HG/GL leitmotif (by Michael McCuistion I think?) is property of Dynamic Music Partners http://www.dynamicmusicpartners.com/

All characters in this video and all the clips used are property of DC/WB.

"Starcrossed" song itself by Shaunie Littlehawk (yours truly). No profit is being made from this song.

Starcrossed

In the midst of the political climate in recent years, I just woke up with this song one day (sadly I didn't wake up with the voice to sing it too O.o )... it's about what happens when we alienate one another rather than engage in productive dialogue (and no, one-sided "dialogues" and echo chambers don't count).

It's sad that our society is so hellbent on dividing us by shallow differences rather than embracing our deeper commonalities.

It came to me sounding kinda like a Medieval bard song so lute it is I guess... piano & strings.

(Side note... while I was working on this song I was talking to some lady about completely unrelated stuff, then out of nowhere she says I have a really sweet voice... I was like "you're just saying that because you've never heard me sing" LOL)

Dinky art/slideshow thingy by Shaunie Littlehawk (yours truly)
Song by Shaunie Littlehawk & God

Space Car

Song written and performed by Hawkbabies (composed by me)... about their favorite thing in the world: LEGO!!

Love the ambiguity in the first line of the chorus that Hawkbaby #2 came up with, "Lego, build your imagination" which could refer to both building the things you imagine and building and developing your literal imagination... the whole song kinda sounds like a Lego commercial LOL, they just love Lego so much.

Accompanied by stop-motion snippets from the Lego life on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f65Kk8uZuJ0 (sorry for unsteady/choppy filming, I don't have a great setup)

This song and its music video are not made or endorsed by the Lego company or any of the companies whose licensed characters appear in this video. No money is being made from this video (or any of the videos on here, my channel is too unpopular to qualify for monetization LOL)

Fireworks sound effects from:
fesliyanstudios.com
zapsplat.com
mixkit.co

Lighting effects from pixabay.com

Lyrics (c) Hawkbabies
Music (c) Shaunie Littlehawk (yours truly)

Bricktastic

Bricktastic - song by Hawkbabies

Song about an angry volcano, written and performed by Hawkbaby #1... he wrote the lyrics and the melody, then he picked the instruments and I composed based on the rhythm he played on the guitar.

There's some pretty gnarly chords there... and chords on top of other chords, and yet other chords that I don't know where they even came from and why they seem to make sense LOL.

Song (c) Hawkbaby #1
Music (c) Shaunie Littlehawk (yours truly)

Into the Heart of the Volcano

Into The Heart Of The Volcano - song by Hawkbaby #1

Song written and performed by Hawkbaby #2... she says she was doing totally unrelated things and thinking totally unrelated thoughts, and all of the sudden all these lyrics just came to her LOL. She wrote the lyrics and melody, then picked the instruments and I composed.

Song (c) Hawkbaby #2
Music (c) Shaunie Littlehawk (yours truly)

Breaking Shadows

Breaking Shadows - song by Hawkbaby #2

Song written and performed by me... well actually this song came from a dream I had like a zillion years ago and I wrote it down in some notebook when I woke up, then totally forgot about it until recently when I found that old notebook and saw that song in it, then it all came back to me.

No idea whom the lyrics were supposed to be aimed at since I've never been the "follow the crowd" type LOL (usually to my own detriment, more details about that in my description for my song "DNR" https://soundcloud.com/myvoiceruinseverything/dnr )

I don't really remember what the dream was about except that it was a very fast paced action dream, and when this song was playing in the background I was running in some dark, gloomy indoor space, toward a door and opening the door, and there was a feeling of dread.

In the dream though the song was about an octave lower and sung by a beautiful, deep, smooth, authoritative female voice. Sadly I can't sing that low, or at all for that matter O.o I Googled and Soundhounded this song and couldn't find anything, so I guess my subconscious just made it up?

Song by Shaunie Littlehawk (yours truly) and God

Break Away

Song written and performed by me... yet another song I heard in a dream (a very recent dream unlike "Break Away" https://soundcloud.com/myvoiceruinseverything/break-away )

I guess it's about some prideful loser who's still a loser no matter how full of themselves they are? I dunno, blame my subconscious LOL.

I don't really remember much of the dream, but I was some kinda agent protecting some witness or something and then for some reason I had to go into hiding at the palace of the Queen of Belarus, who had two young daughters. The daughters put this song on after I came to the palace, except that in the dream it was sung by a deep, throaty male country singer voice and was several scales lower, and obviously sounded waaaaaay better than my "wimpy 12-year-old" rendition here. O.o The music sounded plucky so plucky instruments it is.

Song by Shaunie Littlehawk (yours truly) and God

Wrong Side of the Street

Wrong Side Of The Street

Song written and performed by me... written when I was like 13 or 14. Actually this song started out as part of a (super cringe) fanfic I wrote about an X-Men talent show, then I was like "hey, I actually like this song... but the lyrics gotta go" (even though the lyrics actually weren't bad). So I changed it into something more personal.

It was aimed at my abusive mother and it might sound like the usual teenage angst, boohoo no one understands me, my parents don't even know who I am etc... but it wasn't. It's about me having to literally hide every aspect of my being from my mother who'd wage war against everything I liked, everything I did, everything I thought, everything I felt etc, just the entirety of being me which for some reason she just hated with intense passion. None of it was ever justified because I was the most wholesome little nerd with G-rated interests and activities, not the rebellious kind, but she saw my insistence on tending to my hobbies and interests, dressing modestly, not dating, and generally having no interest in peer pressure stuff etc and just being myself as a rebellious affront to her, and so whatever bits and pieces I could salvage of being me and doing what I liked, I had to do in secrecy, in the shadows, underground, in isolation, trapped. So this is what this song is about.

Sadly I was right about having no future and no past... here’s pathetic little me all these years later working a dead-end, minimum-wage job and posting bad music no one listens to LOL.

Song by Shaunie Littlehawk (yours truly)

Tunnel to Nowhere

Song written and performed by Hawkbaby #2. Sorry I suck at mixing, as hard as I try I can't make it sound like it wasn't recorded inside a tin can O.o

Lyrics (c) Hawkbaby #2
Music (c) Shaunie Littlehawk (yours truly)

Lord of Lords

Lord Of Lords - song by Hawkbaby #2

Burl Ives’s song “Holly Jolly Christmas” has been taken over by adorable roly polies (AKA pill bugs)… I blame my gassy brain.

Filk written by me, performed by the Littlehawk clan… my voice sounds like nails on a chalk board and Hawkbabies are tone-deaf, and our recording equipment is sub-par, so my sincere apologies… adorable roly poly music video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7cHfhLW_YY

Lyrics by Shaunie Littlehawk

Roly Poly Christmas (a "Holly Jolly Christmas" song parody)

Bruno Mars’s “Just the Way You Are” parody, written & performed by me. Unlike the beautiful model he sings to, I’ve never had a doting boyfriend to sing praises to my physical appearance (rightfully so), so I’ll sing my own un-praises instead. Drew the pic cuz I’m too ashamed to put my face in it.

Disclaimer: I’m not actually amazing, I’m the most unremarkable, unaccomplished underachiever (in large part due to looks), but this song's for the actual amazing ones who are so capable, but are being denied opportunities cuz of an undesirable visual. The ones who aren’t gorgeous, pretty, cute, or even plain… the ugly ducklings who grew into ugly ducks.

Yeah I know I coulda done more, been more etc if I didn’t look like this. Course it’s taboo to acknowledge someone’s ugliness, but you still get discriminated against so bad that sometimes I think it should be regarded as a disability. Don’t mean like deformity due to actual medical conditions etc. When you’re deformed or have an actual disability you get compassion, awareness, people/organizations fighting for your rights/inclusion & against discrimination. When your facial features just don’t get along with each other, you’re fair game.

Talking about you, Odile, who when I was desperate for work and applied for a job at the dorms, told me you’d let me know when one opens, and I quote, “but not in the office, in cleaning, because you don’t look good”. Office got paid on top of room & board. Cleaning was room & board only, stranding me in poverty and destitution, couldn’t even afford to wash my filthy clothes after scrubbing barf every day.

And you, Sabrina, who scheduled that specific audition for that specific dance for a day & time you knew I wouldn’t be able to attend on purpose, just so you could cast Addy and then tell me it’s because “she’s the shortest, most flexible girl at school”. I was a dancer/gymnast & people would call me a circus freak cuz everyone knew I was the most flexible at school. Addy was an inch taller than me, taking gymnastics with me & couldn’t even do splits or backbends, and she left dance because they wouldn’t let her be the star. But she was pretty & skinny.

And you, print shop owner, who wouldn’t hire me with my Photoshop skills the job description required, and instead hired that tall, skinny, pretty blonde. When I needed the shop’s services a few weeks later, I literally had to tell Generic Barbie step by step how to do her job on Photoshop cuz she had no clue.

Etc etc etc…

Also another disclaimer, before anyone gets all butthurt. I’m not equating fat with ugly, seen plenty beautiful fat/overweight people. BUT this song’s about my physical features and being fat makes me look worse, plus the disproportionate way my body deposits the fat that’s always made me look even fatter than I really am. Was told I was too fat at 105 lbs size 6 as a dancer & overall one of the best athletes at school. Nearly starved myself eating less than 200 calories a day & plateaued at 98 lbs size 4, and still told I was too fat. So yeah.

And BTW Hollywood, with all your “inclusion”/“representation” etc. Where’s all the ugly people? Not talking about roles of bad guys, addicts, general undesirables etc, or comic relief. Easy to hate/laugh at. Where’s the person who’d strut out there with their asymmetrical face and untoned body, with bulging eyes and a hooked nose dripping over their chinless double-neck, and flash a crooked smile full of imperfectly-aligned, life-stained teeth at their many friends and just exist and be a great person with a great life who does great things. WHERE ARE THEY??

Nowhere… cuz at the end of the day, no matter what “body positivity” and “expanding beauty standards” they supposedly try to push, “ugly” doesn’t sell. No one wants to look at ugly, not even uglies (mirror’s traumatizing enough), and it’s all about the money. So take your fake “inclusion” and shove it.

/rant

Lyrics & “art” (c) Shaunie Littlehawk

Just The Way I Am (a "Just the Way You Are" song parody)

Song written and performed by Hawkbaby #2, composed by me.

Let It Burn

Let It Burn - song by Hawkbaby #2

Song written and performed by Hawkbaby #1, composed by Shaunie Littlehawk (yours truly)

A Thousand and One Memories

A Thousand And One Memories - song by Hawkbaby #1

Song written and performed by Hawkbaby #1, about a person who does good deeds in secret. Composed by Shaunie Littlehawk (yours truly)

It's the Man in the Shadows

It's the Man in the Shadows - song by Hawkbaby #1

Song written and performed by Hawkbaby #2, composed by Shaunie Littlehawk (yours truly)

What Is Wrong with This World

What Is Wrong with This World - song by Hawkbaby #2

The Everlasting Hope

The Everlasting Hope - song by Hawkbaby #1

Song written and performed by Hawkbaby #2, composed by Shaunie Littlehawk

Snow

Snow - song by Hawkbaby #2

Song by Hawkbaby #2, composed by Shaunie Littlehawk

Who Knows

Who Knows - song by Hawkbaby #2

Song for Mother's Day, written and performed by Hawkbaby #1, composed by Shaunie Littlehawk

Mom - song by Hawkbaby #1

Once upon a time, on a hot, hot summer day... we were standing at the bus stop waiting for a bus that didn't show up, for a long long time, with only a sliver of shade cast by a lamp post. So I just started singing "sliver of shade, oh sliver of shade"... and then at random intervals would just burst into these mostly improvised verses. So here it is LOL.

It's mostly just one chord. It sounded kinda blues-ish so originally I was trying to compose it with traditional blues instruments... I was browsing my drum kits to figure out which one to use, but then I came across this "telephone kit" and I was like, to heck with traditional LOL, it just sounded too awesome together to pass up. So I ended up with this... what, "electro-blues" fusion or whatever? Is that even a thing?

Song and art by Shaunie Littlehawk

Sliver of Shade

I'm a big geek who gets inspired way too easily. Right now I'm working on more music and videos, hope I'll be able to post more soon. I write both my own original music and filks to other people's tunes, my YouTube channel has music videos for my songs here. https://www.youtube.com/@MyVoiceRuinsEverything
Also up on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4IMLzsrMVFn94vgHMte1VN

Popular tracks by My Voice Ruins Everything