Lyrics should not be too obvious. If the listener knows what you’re saying in the first ten seconds of the song, why would they continue to listen?

A while ago I declared that songwriting isn’t lyric writing. I think I was even interviewed about the idea.

I still stand by that assertion and I still think songwriting bloggers and writers focus way too much on lyric writing.

However, songwriting is obviously about setting words to music, and I’m not denying that lyrics are central to what we songwriters do.

So this post contains two lyrical ideas that I like and have tried to use myself:

1. Crossword-clue lyrics.

Last post I linked to an article that expressed confusion over the meaning of ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’.

Yes, weird huh?

My favourite lyrics from this song are:

A mulatto
An albino
A moquito
My libido

Is it nonsense? Of course not. A mulatto and an albino are opposites in skin colour. A mosquito is a very small thing, and the teenagers libido must therefore be the opposite. It’s a crossword clue, and yes it’s a bit silly, but Nirvana (like Radiohead) always had a sense of humour that some people ignore.

2. Free association.

The world’s my oyster soup kitchen floor wax museum.

A lovely fun song by King Crimson. Adrian Belew’s lyrics for the latest version of King Crimson have been a wonderful mix of nonsense, silliness and more nonsense. This particular song is all word association and means almost nothing, whilst still being full of a kind of meaning.

I’d also recommend having a look at the work of David Bowie, or this piece of genius in favour of foul language from the recently reformed Carcass:

Silence has a definition
Vocabulary of muted diction
Precise thought to miscomprehend
Ambiguity in high resolution
Articulate expletive fiction
Open to misinterpretation – so precise…

In Summary

It might be a matter of personal taste, but for me lyrics should not be immediately obvious. Perhaps it’s because I started out as a heavy metal fan, where the lyrics are not the primary means of communication, and are very rarely to be taken literally.

Listeners want to be told a story, they want to be suprised, or amused or made to work. Obvious is superficial and no-one wants art like that.

Songwriting isn’t lyric writing, but that (I suppose) doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work on your lyrics.

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It’s been a while since I did one of these ‘Stealing ideas’ posts, so let’s correct that and get back to stealing songwriting ideas….

The Police – Message in a Bottle

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJJgM23gLh8]

The Police wrote a hell of a lot of catchy pop songs, and whether this is the best or not (I certainly like it) there’s a lot of stuff to steal here.

1. The Groove

One of the wonderful things about London is the cultural mix: countless nationalities have made a home here over the years. The clear reggae influence in the Police’s music is no accident. It probably results from the mixing of Jamaican culture with white English in 1970′s London.

That mixture of straight rock with hints of reggae isn’t unique to the Police, and the mixing of different grooves can be a very effective way of livening up your own song. Why not think about what drum beat you’re going to use before you start writing?

2. Chord Shapes

-|——————————–|
-|——————————–|
-|—–8——-4——-6———-|
-|—6——-2——-4———6/7|
-|-4——0——-2———-4—-|
-|————————2——-|

The tab above is the main verse riff. Andy Summers uses 9th chords in several songs, and here we have the simplest way of dong it: root, fifth, ninth and nothing else (except the final note, which puts in the 3rd of the F sharp minor chord)

There are two ideas to steal: the chord voicing, and the idea of using the same chord voicing/shape in different positions to create a progression.

3. The Structure

This song is very simple, and makes use of a standard verse, pre-chorus, chorus structure (the post I’ve linked to here expresses confusion over the lyrics of ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’, a song that I thought had a very clear meaning…).

The Police have cleverly decided to repeat a lot of things and get a lot out of a little. That’s definitely an idea worth stealing.

There’s also a nice coda: the verse riff with the line ‘sending out an SOS,’. It’s a mixture of old and new ideas. Ending your song with something the listener hasn’t heard before can be very effective, particularly if it isn’t completely new material.

In Summary

There’s a lot that could said about The Police, who managed to have hits with catchy but deceptively sophisticated songs. It’s always useful to work out what’s going on in your favourite Sting or Police songs.

And stealing the ideas is a good idea too.

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There’s a man named Lorenzo who is braver than I.

He submitted his song to song writing competition and subjected it to feedback from a songwriting ‘professional’.

I would never do this, for several reasons:

1. My only interest in composing is to please myself. Other people’s opinions don’t come in to it.

2. I wouldn’t want a song of mine judged in accordance with those criteria. ‘Marketability’? A song becomes a good song because it can be sold? There’s some dodgy reasoning there, not to mention a misunderstanding of how music sells.

However, I find it fascinating that Lorenzo Policelli (and presumably lots of other people too) has gone down this route and his blog is an interesting look at a part of this songwriting lark that I’m certainly never going to cover on Songwright.

In this episode I show you the difference between the minor scale and the dorian scale. I do this via the folk song Scarborough Fair and my own setting of a couple of stanzas from Blakes ‘London’

[audio http://www.wellwrite.co.uk/songwright/songwrightep9.mp3] Download

This episode finishes with a pleasantly lo-fi song by The Family Simpson