Filker.com

A Planet Called Melody

Lyrics and Music ©1987 by Bill Roper


I hate it when I write a song that turns out not to be in my own key. Of course, I wrote this song long enough ago that my voice has shifted around and it's a little easier to get to than it was when I wrote it.

There's no particular source material here, other than the hundreds (thousands?) of Golden Age SF stories that I've read about planets not like our own. They don't make planets like this any more.

C             F            G          Am
I am a lone explorer and I fly a solo ship
        F            G                C              Am
Through interstellar darkness on this planet hunting trip.
F            G           C                 Am
Passing by a star with a spectrum that was strange
  F                 G            Am
I found what Mother Nature had arranged.

	(Chorus)
	Am  Dm        G             C        A7
	I'm here on a planet that I call Melody,
	Dm              G                 Em             A7
	Waiting for the chorus that comes singing at the dawn,
	        Dm           G                C            A7
	For the voice of the wind through the music of the leaves
	        Dm             G         C
	Makes a song that will go on and on.


I stepped out of my ship, for the air was fit to breathe
And gazed upon a landscape that I just could not believe.
Of silicon and metal was the vegetation made.
With every breeze I heard the song they played.

(Chorus)

When the sun goes down, all the plants – their leaves then close,
And the song that they were singing goes where once-played music goes.
I've been here four days and I should be moving on,
But I think that I'll just wait for one more dawn.

(Chorus)