General Music Chat

In writing lyrics, first you must be able to write clear coherent sentences. Lyrics are a gift to the listener, not a mine that they need to put in hard labor to excavate in the hope that they find a nugget of ore. All the labor must be yours so that the pleasure can be theirs.

Then, each song must have a central idea that runs through every line. The lyrics have to come from that idea. The more specific the lyrics are, the better. The more general they are, the weaker the theme will be.

Take The Beatles, for example. Name a song: "Paperback Writer," let's say. Every line is from the perspective of the wannabe writer. Every line tells us something about his desperation, the limitations of his talent and his delusions about his talent. Or "Drive My Car," for example. Its lyrics are focused and witty and they end with an ironic joke. "Revolution" not only stays focused and cutting, but it also has one of the greatest lines ever written for a rock song: "...if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone any how." There are dozens of Beatles songs just as focused, witty, insightful poignant and compact.

Contrast those with lyrics by, say, Styx, which are often senseless strings of words that don't even make sense in the English language. Take "Come Sail Away" for example. Here's the first verse:
"I'm sailing away set an open course for the virgin sea
I've got to be free free to face the life that's ahead of me
On board I'm the captain so climb aboard
We'll search for tomorrow on every shore
And I'll try oh Lord I'll try to carry on"

The narrator starts off declaring his need to be free, then pivots to asking for companionship (under his captainship) and ends by crying that he'll try to carry on. Carry on what? There's no set up for carrying on, just for sailing away. It's an unfocused thought. Then, suddenly in the second verse, he's not a free man looking to sail away, but someone who thinks he's having a religious vision. Then in the third verse, he's suddenly being visited by space aliens. The whole song is a thematic mess.

Also, good lyrics avoid cliches. "I'll try to carry on" is a cliche. "Take your best shot and don't blow it," another Styx lyric, is a cliche. Commonness alone doesn't make a line a cliche. You can write "I love you" and it won't necessarily be a cliche, but if you write "be true to yourself" or "reach for the stars," you're deep into cliche territory. A good lyricist doesn't only avoid cliches, but understands that if the words grow naturally out of the theme, the theme itself will lead to non-trite lyrics.

Rhymes should rhyme, or they should conjure an image, thought or emotion so powerful that the technical failure to rhyme becomes secondary. In other words, if your rhyme doesn't rhyme, it should be because you have mastered the form well enough that the non-rhyme is deliberate.

I guess I should man up and offer some of my own lyrics, to be trashed or complimented as the reader sees fit. These are a few lines of a country song I wrote called "Handling Snakes." The song has five verses and a chorus. Here are two of the verses.

"They'll leave you bit and bleedin' in the paradise of Eden.
The apple is good, but it has its cost.
You'll know they aren't toys when you're suckin' out the poison.
Before you know it, it's paradise lost.

"You can be the winner if you ain't the boa's dinner.
Keep yourself clear of its crushing coils.
Yeah, you can be the victor by avoiding the constrictor.
And to the victor will go the spoils."

Kweeg. Bro. Don't. Ever. Say......you're confused by STYX lyrics.

Street cred is very hard to gain back, once you've lost it.

90% of the time it is lyrics first. Sometimes you come up with a cool riff that you roll lyrics over the top of. It works best for myself if I create a scenario first. Then pick a character in the situation and write from their perspective. A lot of time I will come up with a catchy chorus or name I like for the song, then build the story leading up to that. If you have to fight for it, walk away! It will come when it comes. If you can't write it in 15 minutes, it isn't coming naturally and you are just going to complicate it. People like easy flowing songs with down to earth relatable lyrics. Oddly enough, they want the music to be predictable, so they can tap their foot and feel a part of the story. Look at the simplicity of AC/DC, everyone likes that simple blues / Rock & Roll... Plus lyrics first, the melody automatically forms in your head as you write and the story determines how aggressive the music will be. That's my 2 cents.

Well Mr. Duxx,

I think you nailed it. Particularly the part about choosing to write from the perspective of one of the characters in your scenario.

Talbot

There are many songwriters who write the music first, then come up with lyrics to fit. (Todd Rundgren does this now , but didn't when he first started writing).
Some people don't give a FF about lyrical content - it can be nonsense or repetitive. Perfect example is Michael Franti and Spearhead. His lyrics are meaningful, but simple (usually just a few lines per verse) and just repeat, yet he packs his shows with people who are up and dancing and clapping and loving every minute.

Hey man.... This guys another flyby no show...after all the good advice he's been given.
Shame (bell rings) shame (bell rings)

hey jahva.....good to see you around these parts!

Take The Beatles, for example. Name a song: "Paperback Writer," let's say. Every line is from the perspective of the wannabe writer. Every line tells us something about his desperation, the limitations of his talent and his delusions about his talent. Or "Drive My Car," for example. Its lyrics are focused and witty and they end with an ironic joke. "Revolution" not only stays focused and cutting, but it also has one of the greatest lines ever written for a rock song: "...if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone any how." There are dozens of Beatles songs just as focused, witty, insightful poignant and compact.

three words for ya....

koo, koo, ka-choob.

three words for ya....

koo, koo, ka-choob.

I have lived my life by those profound words! I remember an interview with McCartney talking about how that song was about creating an atmosphere of altered consciousness that normal words couldn't convey.

In my opinion, a song starts with an idea. That can be a lyrical idea, or a musical one, but the better the foundational idea is, the better the song will be. It's easier to write lyrics when you have an idea what you're trying to say and why.

So I save the main ideas in a recording or written down somewhere, and when I finally have time to sit down and concentrate on them with pencil and paper, I can decide if it's still a good idea and complete the thought. Then I sing the melody into a recorder and go about the process of finding the best chord structure and arrangement to compliment that melody.

Ob-la-di ob-la-da!

Ted, wasn't "I Am The Walrus" a Lennon song? And thought the lyric was koo-koo ka-joob.

It was Lennon-McCartney, though it does sound more like a Lennon idea/concept. Then again, it's entirely possible I got my wires crossed about who was talking in that interview I heard in the late 70s about the song.

Lost a lot of brain cells since then.



just found this explanation:


For almost 50 years, the Beatles have been the most popular singers and songwriters in the world. Also, coincidentally, for the past half century one of the major activities of musical "armchair quarterbacks" has been to dissect, analyze, and interpret Beatles songs.

In 1967, a student from Quarry Bank High School (Lennon's alma mater) sent John Lennon a letter telling him his teacher was conducting a class analyzing the Beatles' songs. Lennon was wryly amused. This letter served as the initial motivation for John to write a song that was beyond analysis for the simple reason that John didn't want it to make any sense at all. The whole purpose of the song, according to John, was to confuse, befuddle, and mess with the Beatles experts.

WHO IS THE WALRUS?

"Walrus is just saying a dream," recalled John more than a decade after he composed it.

"The words didn't mean a lot. People draw so many conclusions, and it's ridiculous. I've had tongue in cheek all along--all of them had tongue in cheek. Just because other people see depths of whatever in it...What does it really mean, 'I am the Eggman?' It could have been 'The pudding Basin' for all I care. It's not that serious."

John also wanted to make a point about fellow musical icon Bob Dylan, who, according to John, had been "getting away with murder." John said he wanted to show his fans that he "could write that crap too."

"I Am The Walrus," the song with no rhyme or reason, was written in three parts: part one was written by John during an acid trip, part two was written during another acid trip the next week, and part three was "filled in after [he] met Yoko."

Meaningless gibberish or not, many of the song's lyrics did have an inspiration.

The song's opening verse, "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together," comes from the song "Marching to Pretoria," which contains the lyric, "I'm with you as you're with me and we are all together."

"See how they run, like pigs from a gun, see how they fly..." came the next week directly from John's second acid trip.

The song's basic rhythm was actually inspired by a police siren. John heard an oscillating siren blaring in his neighborhood, and this beat served as the basic beat for the entire tune.

"Sitting in a English garden" refers to John's garden in his Weybridge home, where he was living, frustrated and increasingly unhappy, with his first wife, Cynthia.

The lyric "Waiting for the man to come" was written by John, but was amended with "waiting for the van to come" by John's friend from his high school days, Pete Shotton, who was present during the song's composition.

The "elementary penguin" was used by John as a jab at those who "go around chanting Hare Krishna or put all their faith in one idol." John admitted he had poet Allen Ginsburg in mind when he wrote the lyric. (Could he also have wanted to get a sly dig in at his bandmate George Harrison, who was enthralled by all things Indian and Hare Krishna?)

Needing a bit for the song's middle section, John asked his old pal Pete to recall a "sick" schoolboy poem the two used to recite together. Pete dredged up the old lyrics:

"Yellow matter custard, green slop pie,
Dripping from a dead dog's eye,
Slap it on a butty, ten foot thick,
Then wash it all down with a cup of cold sick."

The constantly repeated and apparently nonsense lyrics "Goo goo gajoob" come from James Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake." (The actual term Joyce used was "Goo goo goosth.")

Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (one of John's favorite books when he was a youth) gave Lennon the song's title and recurring lyric, "I am the walrus." In that book, Carroll included the poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter." John, always the most political Beatle, had it "dawn on" him that the poem was Carroll's comment on "the capitalist and worker system."

It wasn't until later that John realized that the walrus was "the bad guy" in the poem and that he should have called the song "I am the Carpenter."

"But that wouldn't have been the same, would it?" admitted John.

Another apparent nonsense lyric was "Semolina Pilchard." Many Beatles "experts" have interpreted this as referring to Detective Sergeant Norman Pilcher, who was becoming famous for his drug busts of famous musicians (after he had planted the drugs himself). John himself, along with his then-girlfriend Yoko, was to be arrested in a bust by Sergeant Pilcher a year later. John always insisted the marijuana found at his flat was planted. (Sergeant Pilcher later served six years in prison for his corrupt behavior.) But this "interpretation" may be entirely conjecture, as John can clearly be heard singing "Semolina Pilchard," not Pilcher. A "pilchard" is defined as one of "various small marine fishes relating to a herring." It is a commercially edible species of fish. The line may just simply be another bit of Lennon-esque gibberish and wordplay.

WHO IS THE EGG MAN?

"I am the egg man" has been interpreted as referring to Humpty Dumpty (who appears in John's beloved "Alice in Wonderland" books). Eric Burden, a popular singer/musician and a close friend of John, has claimed that he was "the egg man," and that the lyric refers to a certain sexual act Eric used to perform with women. (Eric says he would crack eggs over naked women's bodies and that John witnessed him doing it one night.)

The song's closing features a snippet from a BBC Radio broadcast of Shakespeare's King Lear, which John happened to hear when he was working on the song.

At the song's conclusion, the entire chorus (8 males and 8 females) join in. John said the guys sang "Oompah oompah, stick it in your jumper," while the girls sang "Everybody's got one." But according to Beatles expert Mark Lewisohn (a highly reliable source), the chorus was entirely random with both men and women joining in on each of the two lyrics.

"I Am The Walrus" was the first song the Beatles recorded after the death of their manager, Brian Epstein. (Brian died of a drug overdose on August 27, 1967, and the recording of "I Am The Walrus" came mostly in early September of '67.)

Engineer Geoff Emerick was never to forget "the look of emptiness on their faces when they were playing."

"I Am The Walrus" was released on November 24, 1967. It was the B-side of the Beatles single featuring Paul's "Hello Goodbye" as the A-side. John was always angered by this decision, maintaining that "Walrus" was a far superior song.

A filmed sequence of "I Am The Walrus" was to be featured in the Beatles TV movie, Magical Mystery Tour, later that year. It remains the only film of John singing the song. For this reason, Paul has said Magical Mystery Tour has "a special place in [his] heart."

"I Am The Walrus" was banned by the BBC because of the nonsense lyric "Girl, you let your knickers down."

To be fair, "Walrus" is definitely a strange song, but it may not actually be "the strangest Beatles song." That honor perhaps should go to their 1967 song "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" or, better yet, John's 1968 "Revolution #9."

But heck, who would have wanted to read an article about "the Beatles' second (or third) strangest song"?

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Hey... PG how ya doin! Good to see ya!

I guess I can't even call it my .02 But I love Paul Westerbergs style...I found I take a very similar approach.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... mpossible/

"Many a songwriter, when asked how it’s done, will underestimate the talent he was born with and blow his skill for brandishing it out of proportion. My talent (if that’s what we call it) is never, ever doubting goose bumps."
P. Westerberg