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Issue Date: June 18, 2006
 Winning lyrics: Through the Fall
Meet our winner
Thousands entered our Songwriting Contest for Teens. And our panel of professional musicians selected the best.
When she's not cracking up at a Monty Python movie or plucking a Death Cab for Cutie song on her guitar, Laurel Dammann often is hunched over her computer, writing.
The 16-year-old junior from Arcata, Calif., has been writing songs and poetry since she could form letters. Common themes are "family and the concept of friendship," she says. But when Dammann (pronounced "Damon") sat down to enter our 2006 Songwriting Contest for Teens, she was touched by a more worldly motif.
Her plaintive song, "Through the Fall," beat out more than 5,000 other student entries from across the country. "It's about prejudices and stereotypes. Everybody has them," says Dammann, whose family receives USA WEEKEND in their Sunday Eureka "Times-Standard." "The problem is, some don't look past the differences to see the person and, if they're in trouble, help them out."
Written to the theme "come together," her song made our celebrity judges do just that. Despite their divergent musical backgrounds, Alicia Keys, Damian Marley, Bow Wow, Hoobastank and Sara Evans all selected Dammann's song as the best of 10 finalists (the first unanimous vote in the contest's five-year history). As the winner, Dammann receives a trip for two to the "Billboard" Music Awards in December in Las Vegas, where she'll hang out backstage; a $1,000 U.S. Savings Bond; and a Sony DVD/CD burner and production software. (Runner-up Nathan J. Campbell, 14, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who gets USA WEEKEND in the "New York Daily News," wins a $500 Savings Bond and Sony software.)
Perhaps the biggest prize, Dammann says, is having her words printed in a national magazine. "I'm definitely excited about winning," she says. "It's given me more confidence because I've never really let people read [my music]."
More than 47 million readers is a pretty impressive debut.
THE WINNING LYRICS
"Through the Fall"
by Laurel Dammann
Today I saw the world
Fall apart before my eyes,
All of it blown away
Into the burning colored skies.
I thought no one could hear me
Crying lonesome in the street,
But someone took my hand
And helped me to my feet.
They kept me from going under,
They kept me standing tall,
Because we came together
They helped me through the fall.
I found a lonely stranger
Lost in the darkened night,
I told him that together
We could find the flickering light.
I kept him from going under,
I kept him standing tall,
Because we came together
We helped each other
through the fall.
What the judges had to say:
This year, we lined up a red-hot panel of the top musical artists from five genres: R&B, country, reggae, hip-hop and alternative rock. And they all voted Dammann's song No. 1. Here, their comments on "Through the Fall:"
Alicia Keys"I liked that she's not telling you what to think. She's just expressing what she feels and observes. You can interpret it any way. It can be the fall from grace, the fall in a romantic relationship, the fall in a deeper, worldly experience. "And that's the sign of a great song."
Sara Evans
"It's poetic and moving, and it makes sense from the first line to the last. There's none of that 'since this sentence ends with bird, the next has to end with word.' "
Damian Marley
"I really love her lyric, 'burning colored skies.' It gives you such a visual. At first, as someone who spends time in the West, it made me think of the Twin Towers. But, for someone in Baghdad, it would be different. And for someone in Somalia. That's really cool."
Bow Wow
"This song just stood out. Off the top, it's positive. And I feel that's really important nowadays. Everybody needs some peace and positivity. In music right now, nobody is talking about that. Nobody."
Doug Robb, Hoobastank
"I think a lot of people can understand it, because we've all felt like we need someone to pick us up. There's always going to be music about loss and hard times."
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Make A Difference
Words are important
In addition to our annual teen lyric contest, USA WEEKEND looks for other ways to support writing among today's youth. To that end, in September, publisher Chuck Gabrielson gave $10,000 to Groundwork for Youth, an after-school and summer literacy enrichment program for at-risk children in Brooklyn, N.Y., public housing. One day, we hope to read their words, or songs, in the magazine.
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