During the 1970s I got my Associate in Arts degree, a wife, a stint in the Navy, four kids, part-time work singing professionally, and helped invent email. The seventies also had some hit songs. None of them are on this album. But in between everything else I composed songs that were generally my wry observations on pop culture and my place in it. And here they are!

Every familiar '70s radio style is represented, from Cheap Trick to John Denver to Carpenters to Ray Price. If you lived through the seventies, or wished you did, you will find something to love in this album.

You can listen to the whole album here, or visit each track listed below to read the lyrics and play that song only.

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No Regrets

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 10/9/2026		Page Views: 252
Hashtags: #Music
A song about being a young dad in the '70s.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (290 words)

When the 1970s began, I was a young man with big plans and the whole world apparently open to me. By the time they ended, I was a husband and a father of four, working to keep a household fed, and the plans had changed. I wrote this song as a wink at that gap between the dreams and the diapers. Being a young dad was hard, but it was also some of the best of my life. The kids were there at the window waiting for me, and that mattered more than any of the plans. I changed a lot of things in those years, and as it turned out, the thing I changed most was me.

Everybody Move to the Country

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/14/2026		Page Views: 86
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The average John Denver song.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (287 words)

The mid-seventies were, among other styles, John Denver's heyday. This song is a parody of his style, and it takes his down-home sentiment to an extreme. But I decided to do it in close harmony, since my baritone lost its ability to sing notes that are Rocky Mountain high a long time ago.

Magic In Your Eyes

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 10/1/2026		Page Views: 80
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My poem meets America (the band, not the country).
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (266 words)

In 1972, magic really did seem to be in the air. Bewitched was still on the air, and I Dream of Jeannie was still in reruns. Some people were claiming to be witches, and Wiccans were coming out of the forest and into the open. So when I needed a song to impress my bride, I wrote this one.

Every Song I Sing (Sounds Like The Carpenters)

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/14/2026		Page Views: 64
Hashtags: #Music
Relax, it's supposed to be funny.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (469 words)

It's no secret that the brother/sister duo known as Carpenters was a major influence on my musical evolution…so much so that I found it was affecting my direction too much. So, in wry awareness, I threw together this little homage. Not exactly a parody, but not serious, either.

How Can I Make Him Love Me?

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/14/2026		Page Views: 124
Hashtags: #Music
Written at nineteen, out of boredom, in a lifeguard chair.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (455 words)

This song has a backstory for sure. When I was about 19, the summer after I graduated from high school, I was working as a lifeguard at the Ponce de Leon Motor Lodge in St. Augustine. There was almost no one ever actually there; so, to fight boredom, I wrote what we now call "fan fiction", a script for Love, American Style entitled "Love and the Girl Reporter". It was, essentially, similar to what eventually became Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman—a light-hearted look at the relationship between the Kryptonian and the Earth woman.

Granny, Bring Your Honda Home!

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/14/2026		Page Views: 164
Hashtags: #Music
Granny's got a motorcycle and no intention of coming home.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (457 words)

Meanwhile, my pal Mike Parry, wanted to write a song with me, a humorous ditty about an old lady who rode a motorcycle. We both worked on the lyrics; I did the melody and demo recording, using Marian's organ and recording equipment to do it. We also filled out the Library of Congress paperwork and were granted a copyright! (So, in other news, the Library of Congress has a 3-inch reel-to-reel tape of me singing this song!)

The Open Window

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/14/2026		Page Views: 116
Hashtags: #Music
Written 1969. Arranged 2003, at the wheel of a big rig. Sung at last.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (266 words)

I wrote this song in 1969, arranged an instrumental version of it in 2003 (while driving my big rig!) and finally recorded the vocal today! My inspiration was the English short story "The Open Window" by Saki (H.H. Munro)—a 1914 British tale with which, other than the title, the song has no relationship. However, I'd toyed with the (impractical at the time) idea of making the short story into a movie, which meant it would need a theme song, which is what I wrote this to be.

Alice's Resistor

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/14/2026		Page Views: 73
Hashtags: #Music
He cannot compete with her television.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (384 words)

I wrote this in 1972, when I was a DJ at WAOC Radio in St. Augustine, while listening to James Taylor's umpteenth song about failing to get the attention of some girl. I always got a kick out of writing style parodies, so I wrote this song about a girl who's so into watching TV that her boyfriend can't get her attention.

Gifts of Love

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/14/2026		Page Views: 103
Hashtags: #Music
Written at the EPA in 1978, while waiting for a program to compile.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (318 words)

I wrote these lyrics back around 1978, when (and while!) I was working for the Environmental Protection Agency. In those days, to write a computer program meant waiting for it to "compile", which meant humans sitting around, waiting to check the output. A lot of these waits were considerable, so I did a lot of poetry. It wasn't until yesterday that I decided to put a tune to it, and I'm pleased with the result!

Sally's Choice

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/14/2026		Page Views: 58
Hashtags: #Music
Finally! A recording of my top song of the late 1970s!
Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s) (500 words)

Here's a song I wrote in the late 1970s, but never got around to actually recording until now. No, I didn't write it about a specific person. I had, by then, started to see that a lot of people seemed unable or unwilling to examine the reasons for their unhappiness. This song was my response.

Something I Know

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/14/2026		Page Views: 115
Hashtags: #Music
A friend said "play something I know." So I did.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (289 words)

So one day in the 1970s I was hanging out with friends, playing the guitar and singing, and one of my friends said, "Play something I know." So I hit a C chord and sang, "Something I know…" It was a joke, of course; and I can't believe I'm the only one in the history of the world who made that joke. Except…I didn't stop. I kept playing, making up words as I went along, until I had this. The lyrics are hardly Shakespeare, but the tune it catchy enough that you probably won't care.

I'm Only As Far As The Nearest Bar

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/14/2026		Page Views: 88
Hashtags: #Music
A 1970 demo whose corny lyrics have aged, at last, into camp.
Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s) (504 words)

Marian Robinson was a woman who—if I recall correctly—was introduced to me by my Mom. Marian had an electronic organ and an ambition: she wanted to write songs and sell them. She could play that organ, though not as well as I could, but she absolutely could not sing, and she couldn't arrange. So that was to be my job.

Because I Once Was Here

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 10/1/2026		Page Views: 70
Hashtags: #Music
A song for a friend dying of an illness nobody had a name for yet.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (347 words)

I wrote this song when I was 27, for a friend who was dying of what I now believe was AIDS. Nobody had a name for it yet; doctors have since traced unrecognized AIDS deaths in the United States back to the late 1960s. All I knew was that my friend kept falling ill with one mysterious illness after another, with good stretches in between, and no one knew why. I wrote this mostly as my own attempt to understand what he was going through, and never published it or sang it publicly. The irony of releasing a song about mortality that I wrote at 27 is not lost on me. Now I'm 75, and the song has taken on a whole new meaning for me, because my own end is in sight.

An Even Greater Love

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 10/1/2026		Page Views: 354
Hashtags: #Music
Written for a Muhammad Ali biopic, I parodied this before Whitney Houston had a chance to disparage Dolly Parton.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (370 words)

Remember Whitney Houston's The Greatest Love of All? Well…not to be outdone, I decided to write a song that was even greater than that one.