Lyrics

Valentine sang his first lyrics as a boy working the fields and strolling the dirt roads that ran through his family farm near the Blue Ridge mountains and Shenandoah River in Virginia. In his teens he wrote his first simple poems for a mandatory high school poetry class which fortuitously advanced his lyric writing. The set meters and rhyme schemes of his poems perfectly suited the lyrics he would later write for the rhythmic melodies of his songs. In his 20s he created mature lyrics, all of them well beyond his years, for the sophisticated, jazzy, showtunes he created while modeling for Elite in New York from 1979 to 1981, around the world from 1981 to 1985, and in Las Vegas, San Francisco and Chicago from 1985 to 1987. He recorded 50 of them as piano-vocal demos with Billy Tragesser on piano in Las Vegas in 1987. Those 50 are included in the book. In his 30s and 40s he wrote few songs but enhanced the storytelling aspect of his lyrics by studying screenwriting and filmmaking, writing over fifty screenplays, and directing four motion pictures. From 2005 to 2010 he wrote over 200 songs in Miami Beach. He recorded 50 of them in what would become his Nashville library of country pop, country rock and ballads, some of which are political. Those 50 are also included in the book. Valentine’s world travels and experiences with all kinds of people in all kinds of work and play situations add a richness to his caring, feeling words. This is a guy who loves and understands people and it shows in his poems and lyrics. Ninety distinct works cover the gamut of emotions and subject matter, each achieving sentiment as well as insight.