I didn’t expect a song written for kids to get under my skin, but “Something Real” did, and I’ve been trying to work out why for a couple of days now.
Part of it is Marsha Swanson herself. She’s spent years doing psychologically informed creative work with children and families, in schools and therapeutic settings, and you can feel that history in the song. It doesn’t talk down to anyone. It doesn’t do the sing song, wagging finger thing so much children’s music falls into. It just sits with a feeling and lets you have it.
Swanson’s own words capture something I’ve always believed: “I’ve never seen the need for a divide between adult and children’s music.” I agree with her completely. Kids feel love, loss, fear and loneliness the same as the rest of us; they just haven’t got the vocabulary yet. Listening as an adult, I didn’t feel like I was eavesdropping on something meant for someone else. I felt like I’d been handed a song I needed at seven and never got.
“Something Real” came out on 24th July, and it’s the first public piece of a much bigger project called TroubleChutes. The idea behind it is simple and kind of beautiful. Each song comes with its own illustrations and visual storytelling, all matching the same emotional mood, so a child has several ways into what they’re feeling. Maybe the melody reaches them, maybe a picture does. It offers a less exposed way of accessing thoughts and feelings around challenging topics creatively, with options to sing and perform the songs for further embodiment of the themes. Swanson describes it this way: “music can bypass language, allowing emotional truth to be felt, whilst words can help name those feelings.” Having watched plenty of kids go silent when asked how they feel, that line rang very true for me.
The people around this project are serious, too. Henry Thomas, who a lot of us remember from Rockschool, had input on the single and presents in the TroubleChutes television pilot, his first educational presenting job since that original show. The pilot was filmed with St Mary’s Hampton CE Primary School and is now being pitched to broadcasters. Stuart Epps, whose credits include Elton John, Led Zeppelin and Chris Rea, handled additional production and mastering, and the track sounds polished without losing any of its warmth. TroubleChutes was developed and published in partnership with specialist mental-health publisher Karnac Books.
Psychotherapist Susie Orbach summed up my own reaction nicely, saying Swanson “brings emotional literacy to songs whilst warming our hearts.” That’s exactly it.
This is Swanson’s first new music since “Near Life Experience” and the single “Like an Angel,” and it feels like a natural next step rather than a detour. The music video, featuring footage from the television pilot, has now been released, and I’m genuinely curious to see how the wider project develops. If you have children, play this for them. If you don’t, play it for yourself anyway.
Photo Credit: Marsha Swanson.
