Musical Themes
Thompson's songs are often characterized by their personal and observational style and common use of black humor, such as "Turning the Gun On Myself" and "The Things I Do". He is also known for his ability of writing both personal and wry lyrics with a very melodic style, with such songs like "What's This?!!" and "In My Arms". As a lyricist, he has often been compared to his father, but has developed his own unique writing style. He is also said to have a knack of catching the exact state of mind into his songs, like in "Everybody Move It" and "Slippery Slope".
Teddy has said that "Everybody Move It" was inspired and partly based on personal experience with going out to clubs as a teenager, often ending up in a corner watching everybody else having all the fun.
Recurring themes in Thompson's music are love, loss, the look at fame ("You Made It", "Shine So Bright"), popular culture ("A Piece of What You Need"), and regarding much of his earlier work, self-loathing.
While on his first two albums written songs only in a first-person perspective, Teddy has also explored writing songs in the third person, most notably in "Jonathan's Book".
Rufus Wainwright states on the DVD which accompanied the "Release the Stars" album that the song "Nobody's Off the Hook" is about his friendship with Thompson.
Read more about this topic: Teddy Thompson
Famous quotes containing the words musical and/or themes:
“Sometimes a musical phrase would perfectly sum up
The mood of a moment. One of those lovelorn sonatas
For wind instruments was riding past on a solemn white horse.
Everybody wondered who the new arrival was.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)