Story Behind the Song: Trent Harmon, ‘There’s a Girl’
Trent Harmon wants to be known as a songwriter and an artist; the singer, who won the final season of American Idol in 2016, finds the craft of writing just as important as his vocal abilities. One of the songs he is most proud of is "There's a Girl," from his eponymous debut album; written by Harmon, Jimmy Robbins and Laura Veltz, the song was inspired not by one girl, but by several romances that Harmon has experienced. Below, Harmon explains "There's a Girl" in his own words.
["There's a Girl" was inspired by] different people -- a few different relationships and people I dated. They weren’t all great; the song is upbeat and happy, but they weren’t all great -- just like anybody. You get dumped, and you dump people yourself, and it’s terrible for a little bit, but thankfully, I wrote down in my journal a couple of sentences about each one of those people, and I went back and I found them. I still have them; I still have every one of the journals. I went back, and I flipped through it.
I remember the day that I wrote it: We were writing a really sad song, a ballad. It was terrible. It was a horrible song; it was just boring. I said, "Let’s just write it happy. Let’s flip all this and kind of make fun of me and make fun of myself for all the stupid stuff I did," and it worked. I get to reference home; I reference Tupelo in it. That’s really important.
I didn’t realize that it would be so important to write your first single. I think that’s really helped me along the way.
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