Monthly Archives: April 2013

Song’s tough with songstuff

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Following on from the last post, let’s stay with songstuff. You may be wondering how a title and an undeveloped couplet comprise ‘songstuff’. Don’t you need to have the whole song fleshed out before you can talk about content?

No, because you won’t be writing the song that way. Even if you share the stage of being able to write effortlessly to order, you will find yourself assembling the pieces. Every writer is probably different, but they can still only put the song together using its components. Theirs are the many happy accidents that can happen once the idea comes together.

There isn’t anything in the news I want to touch so lets stay off topical currency and look at how songs announce themselves. We’ve been looking at the part narrative plays; albeit in its offshoots and aspects, and I do see a central role, if not a defining one, in the songwriter’s armoury. Even if, paradoxically, writing a song as if you were writing a story is limiting and fraught, if that’s what you feel obligated to do.

If you are going for the story song, consider ‘Hurricane’ by Bob Dylan. It starts off “Here comes the story of Hurricane/the man the authorities came to blame/for something that he never done”. Whether Reuben Carter was falsely tried, the intent of the song; its meaning, is right there. So put away your Dylanology essay sheets for now.

“Here comes the story” instead of “This is the story” helps to roar into that story but that’s just a bonus coming from the master.

You achieve a similar effect with “Let me tell you ’bout the birds and the bees/and the flowers and the trees/And a thing called love” except there it’s the captive audience without the promise of a story. I’m just going to tell you about a whole bunch of stuff, in song.
Another way of declaring that you’re telling the listener a bunch of stuff in song is in the chorus of ‘Gypsy Queen’ by Adam Harvey, “Well I’m singing for the dark and lonely highways/I’m singing for the rivers and the seas/I’m singing for the country roads and byways” What’s instructive in that song is not that it returns to a familiar patina about who will sing for [the narrator], but that it launches into an explanation of what he or she is doing. Singing about the fact you are singing, but doing it artfully and so it fits in the song.

The statement of intent is not a feature that makes a song more honest, even if that is what it aspires to be. A formless song that documents loss is going to have a resonance beyond its technical limitations, while a dexterous work that has no feeling is less successful.

Songs that aren’t telling you any more than you want to hear are an essential part in the industry that keeps music making a viable option. They allow songs that don’t flinch from telling it like it is to be published and performed.

There’s no need to introduce yourself at all. A song doesn’t have to announce its presence or revel in its construct. Nor does its writer.

Where do you keep the songstuff?

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Song language all along
The easiest way to find your own voice is not to look at what other writers have done at all. I’m always surprised at this advice. Perhaps it’s aimed more at musicians. There’s nothing wrong with musicians wanting to learn other styles; that’s in the nature of the working musician.

Whether you want to identify in the same way when you’re a lyricist really depends on whether you see your role as separate. Chances are, if you’re also the mandolin player, you won’t.

However, if your main focus is on your song lyrics – and that’s why we’re here – then you’re better off following the dictates of the songstuff than in genre, the composition of the audience, what the other band members want, or various requirements that have nothing to do with the subject matter of your song. They don’t speak to theme, they haven’t looked at the way you’ve weaved words, or played upon the pattern. But these aren’t the primary features of your best lyric writing either.

It gets back to the song. There’s a mass of deliberation and dispute on deciding what the song could or should be about. But that comes later. When you’re in the act of writing your song, it is the putting together of words in compelling fashion in order to best present the meaning or idea of the song, that is paramount. It’s the dual act of craft and conception.

If you want your lyricist to come up with dazzling wordplay or phrases that get to the heart of the emotion running through the song, then you have to give them the ability to work on the assignment. Dangling a dummy demographic in front of them while they’re working is only distracting.

II

So what is this songstuff? It’s what the song is made of; not in terms of woodwind arrangement in this context, it is more what follows from the premise.

As there are titles that have to serve different functions within different songs; it is evident that it doesn’t need to inform what will be in the song in the same way each time.

Nor do the presence of ‘babe’, ‘missing [you/someone/my darling]’, ‘lonesome’, ‘love’ mean the song must be formulaic. It’s amazing what the superior songster can do with even the most unpromising raw material.

You can end your song abruptly, repeat your chorus even doing the fadeout, I won’t judge. The main thing is you have told the story of the song, or defined its construct.

III

So if the title isn’t going to be enough to ensure a song to add to the portfolio, and just steering away from cliché isn’t going to be the decider in a battle for wordsmith supremacy, what will work for the earnest lyricist? It’s really a matter of starting from the initial standpoint and treating it as though it was something worth the kind of crazy focus that spits out three verses and a chorus.

Whether you are working on a particular song idea because that’s what the manager or the record company wanted, once you get started, think about what the song is about.

That’s all you’ve got to do really. This might sound rich coming from someone who has a smattering of different competing concepts in the early song drafts sometimes (other songs come in whole cloth like my poetry) but I assure you there is no contradiction.

The song weakens at that point it stops being about a shared sense of theme or narrative and diverts from what is there in the title. As long as you keep on your notion of knocking on the door of Paradise or noticing how it’s morning (I’ll leave you to name the famous songs that do this) in quiet disregard for any other minstrel scribe or corporation who may have had a crack at the same topic or title, then you stand a chance of writing a song that may not have the substance of a more original piece, but has all the ingredients that make it enjoyable to dance to or listen to or watch being played.

IV

So let’s write a song showing our songstuff. Let’s say first you want to write a song about the Tunisian girl who wrote on her breasts that her body was her own. There’s a number of approaches you could take, and in order to avoid the jumble and tumble of possible directions, it’s a good idea to move onto the title.

It’s not strictly necessary. You may be one of those writers who has scraps of imagery, thoughts before worrying about a title or the rough structure. You might instead then, have

‘the sense of an innocent/the scent that sent them/ballistic’

which is fine.

You don’t have to work from the title. Where I might slap your wrist for wandering from the purpose or point of the song, I only suggest finding a title as a reliable approach as it anchors the meaning.

Using my approach here; “My Body is My Own, and Not the Source of Anyone’s Honour” is a fine statement and completely on the mark, but unless I’m a feminist, or at least a woman, this doesn’t seem an appropriate angle. Besides, it feels like drawing away from the original act of saying it (or writing it) to title something else that way; even in homage.

No, I think you need your own title.

Getting Things Off Your Chest

We have this western way of difference and display
A message that tapers at the tip of each teat

Leaving aside the unwholesome direction this appears to be going from as early as the second line, the idea is to play on the idea of getting things off our chest and apply this to a lass who was putting things on hers. Then there’s the later meaning of the authorities and the parents seeking to remove what she has written ‘getting things off her chest – like the protest statement’