At 75, I've been going through decades of memorabilia so my kids won't someday have to, and in the process I came upon a trove of old songs and poems that had either never been recorded, or existed only as demo tapes I'd made on cassette tape (ask a Boomer).

In this album I decided to include all the songs I wrote from before my first marriage to the end of my second marriage, a span of about 40 years. Some songs are serious; some are my silly observations of pop culture as manifested by the various eras through which I've lived. I tried to alternate the serious and the silly. I'm the songwriter, lyricist, and composer—same as always—but this time around I made use of modern AI tools to produce the recordings, the same way I once leaned on MIDI, Cakewalk, and a computer to record my 1997 first album.

Almost every lyric—and most of the melodies—on this album I wrote before 1976. That's why "Alice's Resistor" name-drops Marcus Welby, M.D. and "Sally's Choice" mentions Charlie's Angels. I could have updated the references, but decided not to. No one watches TV anymore, anyway.

I'm very pleased with how these turned out. I hope you enjoy them!

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

Now Playing:

◀◀ Previous Next ▶▶

Music Only Dogs Can Hear

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/23/2026		Page Views: 291
Hashtags: #Music
The title song: what dogs hear that we can't—and what we won't.
Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s) (495 words)

This song exists because the album needed it to. It is, for that reason, the newest song on the album, and the only one written after 1976. I'd had the album title for a good while before I realize there was no song by that name on the record!—so the album was very nearly finished before its own title track got written.

Everybody Move to the Country

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/14/2026		Page Views: 7
Hashtags: #Music
The average John Denver song.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (278 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 high notes a long time ago.

Magic In Your Eyes

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 10/1/2026		Page Views: 9
Hashtags: #Music
My poem meets America (the band, not the country)..
Estimated reading time: 1 minute(s) (207 words)

My poem meets America (the band, not the country).

Every Song I Sing (Sounds Like The Carpenters)

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/14/2026		Page Views: 45
Hashtags: #Music
Relax, it's supposed to be funny.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (301 words)

It's no secret that the brother/sister duo known as the 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: 46
Hashtags: #Music
Written at nineteen, out of boredom, in a lifeguard chair.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (443 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: 72
Hashtags: #Music
Granny's got a motorcycle and no intention of coming home.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (416 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: 36
Hashtags: #Music
Written 1969. Arranged 2003, at the wheel of a big rig. Sung at last.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (265 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.

When I Was A Computer Lad

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/14/2026		Page Views: 45
Hashtags: #Music
Gilbert and Sullivan, by way of Allan Sherman, by way of COBOL.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (430 words)

The tune goes back to Gilbert & Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore, where Sir Joseph Porter sings "When I Was a Lad" to explain how he rose to become First Lord of the Admiralty without ever setting foot on a ship. The 1960s comic Allan Sherman later parodied it—his version follows a guy climbing the ranks in advertising. So I decided to write my own parody, about becoming a computer programmer. Sherman's arrangement was jazzy, a cappella except for drums; for mine, I went Big Band.

Gifts of Love

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/14/2026		Page Views: 37
Hashtags: #Music
Written at the EPA in 1978, while waiting for a program to compile.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (310 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!

The Fly and I

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 10/23/2023 Updated: 8/15/2026		Page Views: 3
Hashtags: #Music
A fight to the finish.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (376 words)

A fight to the finish.

Sally's Choice

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/14/2026		Page Views: 3
Hashtags: #Music
Finally! A recording of my top song of the 1980s!
Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s) (493 words)

Here's a song I wrote in the 1980s, 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.

Alice's Resistor

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/14/2026		Page Views: 3
Hashtags: #Music
He cannot compete with her television.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (369 words)

I wrote this back in 1972, when I worked at the radio station. James Taylor was very popular at the time, and 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.

Something I Know

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/14/2026		Page Views: 46
Hashtags: #Music
A friend said "play something I know." So I did.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (285 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: 5
Hashtags: #Music
A 1972 demo whose corny lyrics have aged, at last, into camp.
Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s) (500 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.

The Heart Remembers

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/22/2026		Page Views: 187
Hashtags: #Music
Mom's poem about forgetting everything except the one thing that matters.
Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s) (478 words)

Another of my mother's poems set to music. Edna Mae Brown-Cilwa was a published poet, and this one is collected with the rest of her work here.

An Even Greater Love

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 10/1/2026		Page Views: 201
Hashtags: #Music
A track from the album, Music Only Dogs Can Hear.
Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s) (282 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.