Many people ask for copies of Alan’s song lyrics.
To download The Alan AtKisson Songbook (free PDF), click here:
From the Preface
Why publish my song lyrics? Because people ask for them.
As an American-born songwriter who composes and sings (mostly) in English, but lives a very Swedish and European life in my adopted home of Stockholm, people often ask me for my song lyrics. They want to learn one or more of the songs, but they have difficulty catching all the words on the recorded versions. For many, English is a second (or third or fourth) language. And sometimes I pack a lot of words into a musical phrase.
So here is a collection of (almost) every song lyric I have ever written. I left out some real stinkers, as well as my very first tender attempts as a teenage songwriter. Nobody really needs to see those.
But I did include a number of songs that have never been recorded and released publicly. Some were recorded and released privately on cassette albums, long before the days of CDs and instant digital sharing (though some of those old cassette recordings were released digitally on the album Ancient History in 2014). And few of these songs are scheduled to be recorded and released in the future.
In short, this is a compendium, and it was put together as much as a record for myself and my family as it was for my friends and those who like my songs and request the lyrics. To be honest, I even have to open up and use this songbook myself sometimes, to remember old lyrics I have not sung for a long time.
This book is also, for me, a reference that I am using to write another book — a kind of “musical memoir” with stories from my experience linked to the songs that emerged from those experiences. That book is called 50 Songs, 50 Stories. I am posting essays from that book occasionally on my website.
You will find the song titles listed in alphabetical order, with the year noted. And on each page you will see which album the song comes from, or whether it was unreleased.
Thanks for your interest. This collection will be periodically updated, too. I expect that I will write more songs in the coming years. It seems I just can’t stop.
Alan AtKisson
Saltsjö-Boo, Sweden
Alan AtKisson 