On Writing Good Song Lyrics



This was an email I wrote to a friend of mine who produces music


We all want to be like the Beatles and Stevie Wonder, myself included, by using abstraction in song and poetry lyrics, where every human on earth can relate to our stoic themes like "Let it be..." "Until the ocean covers every mountain high---I'll love you always." but that's a slippery slope to climb, and I'm beginning to understand I can not pull it off - in the same way NOBODY but Ronald Reagan can stand up in front of the entire world and shout "Mr. Gorbachev Tear down this wall." If any other President had said those brave words at the height of the cold war to the entire Soviet Union, he would have been laughed off the stage. Artists, politicians and others who emulate those sages which preceed them; can't even come close. Examples include Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other black reverends whose rhetoric and passion, though practically identical, doesn't compare to the firey brimstone of Martin Luther Kings Jr's - who will make you cry if you just listen to him speak.

Artists like Stevie Wonder are revered because they were pioneers in their genre, and we may by some miracle receive that standing, but it will be by using different methods, different music, and different lyrics. I think we have so far. You say the melody I hummed was too close to Lenny Kravtiz "It ain't over 'til it's over", but this was a fact I disclosed and I realized after I was done conjuring it up. On the contrary, there are common progressions in music; many famous rock and roul / blue artists virtually copied the Bach Conciertos in the 1950s. The first ten notes of "Another old Lang Syn" are identical to the 1812 Overture. However, a vague similarity was not my intention. Neither is yours. Inspiration is a beautiful thing that can create entirely different things altogether.

Most of these lyrics in the video I sent you, like all initial melodic experiments, were improvd, but even if I sat down to think of them, I realize that my lyrical abilities need dramatic impovement. This is frustrating because I know in my writing my skill is in description and anology. But when you're describing a feeling of love, which is usually, in harmony, restricted by ryhme, the lyrics become redudant and sappy - and takes away from the power. I got to thinking about this more...

I think lyrics can be fixed with a little practice and discipline. First, I think songs; all our songs should tell a story. "Juliet" was half way there, but it fell into the same trap - my fault - since I took it away from where I originally thought it would go - it was originally a confrontation and it turned into a longing, bad move on my part. The story needs to be literal. And we are the best writers when we describe our exact surroundings because we instinctually are paranoid on describing them the way they appear to us in the best way possible - we speak in similies and use spatial and time references - which is great. But unless your shakespeare, poetry isn't intuitive nor immediate. We want to put words together and do what first comes to us, because we think that will sound the best - be the easiest and most natural. We value abstraction, because well, something vague can a) be applied to everyone and then they'll relate to it to themselves (Like that Dan Fogulberg song "Another Old Lang Syne" which touched everyone's heart because they also dream of reuinting with their high school sweetheart) and b) because "If it aint' broke don't fix it." But I'm beginning to understand that words do matter and can always be editing and fixed in music (Fogulberg's song, btw, was literally a story about a specific encounter at a grocery store) and the best composition is one that is edited and re-thought and restructured, and I think we can engineer great meaning into those resonant slots, and make them rhyme with time and patience the same way a manuscript is produced.

At this point, If I were to ryhme about that group of 3rd graders playing soccer over there it would sound more powerful that my song about love - because the words wouldn't be so abstract.

NJO: Originally posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com.