The late actress Carrie Fisher will forever be known as a cinnamon-bunned space princess-turned-blaster-sporting heroine from a galaxy far, far away. But she was so much more than Princess Leia from Star Wars. She was a novelist, memoirist, screenplay writer, and all-around wordsmith, a skill that she eventually translated into song.
Videos by American Songwriter
Here are three songs you didn’t know Carrie Fisher co-wrote.
1. “Bird Song”—Sean Lennon
A longtime friend of the Lennons, Fisher maintained a friendship with Sean Lennon into his adulthood. Together, they penned a sweetly, sleepy piano-powered tune, titled “Bird Song.”
The tune was not recorded until after she passed away. Lennon released it in her memory.
“When she died I just felt I had to record it,” Lennon wrote when sharing the song on his Soundcloud. “This is only a demo unmixed, we only had a few hours to record it. But the lyrics she wrote with me I think are marvelous.”
He recalled, “Carrie and I used to stay up ’til dawn chatting and pontificating about life. They were my best moments. Anyway… we wrote a song about staying up too late and hearing the birds sing.”
Willow Smith adds her vocals to the shiver-inducing track. Listen to “Bird Song,” below.
2. “The Shine”—Harper Simon
Fisher’s near-decade-long relationship with Paul Simon may not have worked out, but she remained close to her stepson, Harper Simon. Together, they wrote “The Shine,” which appeared on Harper’s self-titled debut, released in 2009.
“She wrote all of these stanzas,” he told the Huffington Post in an interview, describing her distinct style as “stream of consciousness.” He recalled his father helping in reworking some of the lyrics “but they had the same rhythm and everything.”
Listen to the result of the Fisher-Simon-Simon collaboration in “The Shine,” below.
3. “I Love The Now” – Jimmy Buffett
Tomorrow’s right around the corner / I’ll get there somehow / But I’m stuck in the meantime / And I love the now, Jimmy Buffett sings in the seize-the-day song.
Fisher, too, had her hand in writing the lyrics to this lesser-known Floridays tune. There is no apparent backstory as to how the two became connected and how the song came to be. The only connection American Songwriter found was pertaining to the 1991 movie, Hook, in which both Fisher and Buffett make too-quick-to-notice onscreen cameos.
Photo by Jean-Jacques LAPEYRONNIE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
