All together now

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So, in sum, while the songs we are writing may take their inspiration or construction from one aspect or another, there are no hard and fast rules to what a song MUST contain. You can work from a title as I do, or build from a line or couplet. You can decide that you have a subject or theme, and you want to explore that, thank you very much.
As an expert, my only role is to point out the pitfalls and illustrate the elements.

Let’s write a song – or, at least, a large part of one – and note what features are present and whether they were in consideration when it is being written.

Shall we settle with a further news item. Apart from taking us out of our obsessions, the act of capturing a point in time that will pass and lose its currency makes good practice; if it quickly dates, we still have the evidence of the process we underwent.

So let’s to the past president of Channel Nine, president of the Collingwood Football Club, commentator and game show host, and his repetition of what was seen widely as a racial slur. Now I don’t want to touch that event or express an opinion (you’d have to read Facebook pages for that) but it reminds me of an older, less politically correct, time, when the expression “you big ape” was bereft of any cultural context and was solely one of rough affection.

You Big Ape

You great big lug with your ugly mug
You’re a beast at your best
Beating your chest
You big ape

Guess what? I worked from the title. I told you I do that. Just don’t let that prevent you from using a different method.

The theme revives an almost archaic expression through the conduit of it appearing in a different context. I stay assiduously with the approach, once I have determined what it is. And I do this without much conscious thought. It comes as a result of other work I’m doing.

If you have your thinking caps on, you should be able to make something of this now. You want a song where a chanteuse is singing to her rough-hewn partner. The first verse has led with the lug comparison and the ugliness and mentioned the wider status of apes and the types of actions they are associated with, finishing with the term itself.

A girl gets the giggles at this gorilla
The man drill has shed inhibition
A monkey flinging shit in false affection
It’s simple to see he is a chimpanzee

This is different. It doesn’t follow from that first verse but you might rescue something from the scraps. It hardly sits well in its current incarnation.

Never forget that it’s not a competition to see how often you can reach a quality draft straight away. Take as long as you like or as long as the song needs.

I don’t think ape analogies need to name check every simian so perhaps we should have stopped with the order to which apes belong rather than ones that belong to it. You don’t need to be this scientific in correcting your approach but at least know aesthetically which bits work.

Ape behaviour is another matter. It’s here the flinging shit carries the most promise. It’s not there yet, but that may be because monkeys fling shit in derision or agitation, not because they like someone or appreciate their actions. And our Aussie vernacular cries for “slinging shit in [] affection” and I’m not sure you can quite pull off the two different activities and motivations.
(but I would definitely put the line in a leadlined box)

Anyway this second “verse” is more for mining ideas to carry the song forward. Normally you won’t see it.

You’ll want to carry on from the light-hearted affection of the first verse as this sets the right tone.
The best lines are ‘You’re a beast at your best/Beating your chest/You big ape’. If you do want to work from parts, this would be the part. You can either keep this rhythm in the language or the playfulness of ape-llation.

Taking things: a part

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Nothing says that a song has to stem from any one part. Sometimes it’s more holistic and you barely know what the first words or images were that rushed to mind.

Nor are all good songs containing of especially memorable parts. It is possible to have a serviceable song that has no peaks or troughs and does and goes as you would expect.

You would be no more advised to pursue perfection in parts than to pay heed to those other features that are a distraction, not an aid. Write the song and let it take its own path and display its own parts.

For all you know, the part that matters to people is the grouped chorus or other addition that wasn’t part of your original thought; or even what you’ve taken to the others. The extent to which you can let this go – if it works – is one of the challenges.

Part as a whole

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While I emphasise the song as a whole (or the story the song contains/image it sustains) in this instructional blog, one should not overlook the part the part has to play.

Whether it’s noting the bad grammar of ‘this ever changing world in which we live in’ or the clunky image of ‘you wouldn’t know me from a can of paint’, particularly bad parts stick in the conscious of the listener more than the unexceptional or fitting parts of the song. However, a song has been sold on just one part and, if you’re really (un)lucky, you will thus hear the part repeated.

The consummate lyricist has no time for this (unless the motif is repetition) and will continue to where the song leads him or her. Be content that there is a memorable line, a quirky couplet, a terse but tender turn of phrase. And, sure, if you’re the bassoonist, think about your bassoon parts as well.

Is it possible to manufacture a part? It’s evident that there are songs that are built around their strongest point, rather than containing such in a mix with other elements that also serve to serve the song. And, on balance, you are better exercising your craft writing a full song, rather than an extended part.

Let’s say you have a part of a song where you are witness to an atrocity (as an example), and this image you’ve conjured is powerful enough to be the centrepiece. Any ideas? That’s the thing, as I’m racing ahead, you should always gauge your ability to engage with the topic and then mold that into the shape of the exercise. Here we’re asking for an eyewitness account to suggest a line or phrase, and from there show how the snippet can inform the song.

Here you might protest that the part of the song is dictated by the theme so it won’t be the part that is telling the story, it will be the parameters the part was given. To ward off this objection, let’s follow it with a more abstract clause. So, firstly:

‘Blood on your hands should have stayed a metaphor‘

So, that’s pretty clumsy; maybe worthy of a pub rock number when no one is really listening but you kind of know that this isn’t going to be a deep philosophical dissertation on the subject, but arresting as an image in the constraints of the song.
There is probably still more lyrics written that are perfunctory or on their way to going somewhere before abandoning it for the drink rider. We don’t aim to write them, naturally, but it helps to know how they perform in the song.

It’s hard to say whether you’d want to turn this “beginning” (as the exercise is to write with the part as the starting point, not because this will be the actual beginning of the finished song), into a song based on the incident of the extremist killing a soldier in a London crowd and holding up his bloodied hands, or whether it doesn’t match the event. It is probably safer to turn down a cartoon horror corridor, where you lose nothing in the saleability and the song has a chance of being okay rather than offensively “too soon”.

And if you think of a better line along the way, as always, be prepared to grab it rather than hoping you’ll remember it later, after you’ve finished staying with the theme you’re after for this one.
Many a writer has forgotten some of the best lines of their life because they thought they could remember them later.

II

‘I couldn’t match the motion of that blade and bloodied hand’

Now this line, believe it or not, is apropos of no real world event whatsoever. It’s taking a sidereal shift and tracing the arc of stabbings and slicing innumerable. If you count every swordstroke, every machete blow, every sideswiped with a scythe.. this is subject to our history as far back as you can recount.

Now that you have a line or phrase – a part – that is telling a story, rather than recounting an event, you are free to take it into any avenue you wish.

Even though you’ve divested yourself of a specific association, there is still the objective question of what can be done with ‘I couldn’t match the motion of that blade and bloodied hand’ as opposed to ‘Blood on your hands should have stayed a metaphor’. The latter is a deprecatory account of the murderous erupting into our everyday, while the former is classic storytelling. It doesn’t matter where you go with this – it reads as a first person account from the victim; otherwise why the urgency to match (fail to match) blows?

When we say ‘part’, technically this could mean the title, the opening line (as an event), the refrain. I’ve used it here as a separate entity that informs the song. The line about bloodied hands being better as a metaphor, or the one describing the attack from the victim’s perspective, are capable of more than one treatment. The important thing is, that they do stimulate the creative impetus and result in a good song.

III

So, again, the part might be a title “Blood on your Hands“, an opening line ‘I consider calm and kindness/the best conditions for a crowd‘, a chorus ‘and everyone can see/there’s blood on your hands/blood on your hands‘. You can use a mixture of these, or decide that one restricts where you would like the song to go – or more the case, where the song wants to go. The part can be similar to the notes a writer makes when constructing prose: characterisation and background not featured in the book that nonetheless informs how well rounded the characters and scenarios are that do appear. In a song, a phrase like ‘eyewitness to an atrocity’ would make a suitable headline but doesn’t have the right feel for a song title and would have trouble sitting in the song itself. As a reminder of where you want the focus of the song to rest, it could prove valuable and it is, therefore, also a part.

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’

Loosened the plot

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Does a song have a plot? It doesn’t follow the same progression as a story, so there is no reason for a song to possess a plot.

You could see a plot in a traditional or folk song because this is the structure; it starts out describing the situation at one juncture and ends showing what happens as time passes. However, not even the old songs all follow this pattern, not by any means. It’s just as likely that a piece will dwell on how gorgeous one’s paramour is, or study a subject closely. If the narrative is timeless or static then it’s less likely to have a plot.

Look at “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers. Here the verses set the scene and then the chorus is the old man’s advice repeated so taking us away from the card table through reflection. The plot consists of a current day gambler using past pearls of wisdom to inform his conduct at the table and in life generally. This active use of metaphor tells a story with less filling than an actual short story or novella, because there is the other aspects of the song for the audience to appreciate: the sound and construction of the song, the performance, the way it fits into the milieu..

II

Let’s get into a little practice then, despite the fact that we’ve just recognised that a plot is a fairly unimportant component of song lyrics and may occur by chance, if at all.

It has to be said, even as we do this, that probably whatever plot one devises, it would be better utilised in another medium than song. Not if you decide to keep it simple though. For example, a plot for a movie or television episode might consist of a hypnotist committing murder through sleeper subjects and that’s a good chance for dialogue and set scenes, a fine opportunity for actors to show their chops, but does the process of illustrating this restrict the potential? Compare ‘Falling For You‘, the title of a song before it is that of a play or short film. Rather than just riffing off this title, because we want to look at plot potential, I have a plot in mind: each verse talks (in a poetic way) of how the narrator or protagonist falls; off mountains, off fences, off a motorcycle, and then how this is all still about the ‘you’ in the title. A particular fancy, I should fancy. This is too rudimentary for anything but a children’s book – the repetition, that is! – but perfect fodder for a song.

It might be a song with a plot, but that depends on how you write it. You see, after making the choice to talk about the person relating events, taking different kinds of falls, there’s still more than one approach.

You might decide ‘screw the plot’ at this stage, if the exercise has given you the material to write a good song using this title and theme. Why try to make this go somewhere in the way that “Bus Stop” by Manfred Mann does, where the act of sharing an umbrella blossoms into a full blown love affair. There might be some satisfaction in all the falling resulting in reciprocity or at least an appreciative glance down at your crumpled form at the base of the ladder. But if the falls are diverting enough and the images strong, the listener probably won’t notice.

III

Falling For You

I fell forward and I fell hard
on the path to your half
the length of your yard

I fell
out of practice
I fell
out of bed

Falling for this feeling
Propelled on by chance
The mind finds it’s reeling
Circled by circumstance

IV

What you may have noticed is how the poetry takes over, leaving no room for a proper plot. It’s still talking about “falling for you” but it isn’t doing so with the objective of seeing that the narrator falls into his or her baby’s arms by the end of the song. In one approach, you would be using serviceable language to tell a tale, in the other one is using visual imagery and lyrical ambiguity to weave a song that reveals further meaning over time.

Apart from as an academic exercise, I don’t see virtue in pursuing plot foremost. Allow the song lyrics to convey their meaning through their delivery and any inherent musicality, and things like ‘plot’ and ‘script’ and ‘narrative’ will sort themselves out of their own accord.

V

Here’s a different take on ‘Falling For You’ where you take that surveyed route of falling off different heights.

I had this falling dream
I can’t recall if it was some recent wall
that we clambered over calmly
that we called from as we climbed
I know how it sometimes seems
Falling for you

VI

Notice how, here, you start off telling the story right from the vantage of falling off things yet by the end of the snippet there are other things falling out as the lover tumbles headlong into the space of the desired one. I suggest you go with it, since letting the song tug the writer along could conceivably be more fulfilling than going with the original idea.
If you wish, you can scribble the other directions all this falling could take for use in other songs, or as a fascinating future curio for those keen to learn.

If anything, this works better in song than in anything but the most experimental novel or fringe theatre. And then you’ll be onto the next tune, which is about something else.

Writing to theme

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There’s a difference between not stopping to think about what the theme of your piece is (a balking mechanism if I ever heard) and writing to a theme. If the theme already exists then write the song and, with the right skill, it will stand with any work produced to that theme.

So, let’s keep with the idea of choosing from events as they occur, to remove subjective sensibility from the process. After all, if you are asked to write to a theme, already you are at one remove to creating a work from scratch. If you had to write a song on the subject of where to shoot – bearing in mind that this is derived from the state government decision to allow shooting in national parks, and the fact that the US massacres have reached a new low by being staged in a primary school. The two items speak to different things; the danger of being hit by stray bullets while enjoying nature vs the danger of being targeted in what should be a safe zone in societal terms. There’s a link there, and if you can run the narratives in parallel then you have a potent work of art.

That’s the key though. This seems for all the world like a political discourse, writing a song about gun control, but unless you’re a folk singer writing to topical currency, there is more potential in examining the lyrical possibilities. The theme isn’t the outlawing of firearms, it’s the notion of having prescribed locations for the discharging of offensive weapons, so that’s the broad direction. But the writing of the song would entail different considerations if you hope to produce the superior or definitive piece.

He’s not old enough for shootouts excepting to pretend as in a game of Cowboys and Indians (though I doubt this is still a children’s playground game) so why is this terrible thing visited on the country’s youngest in their place of learning? So, the question for the songwriting (as opposed to the political essay) course of action is, is this the hook; the inappropriateness of the setting the shooting takes place? If so, you no longer need allude to the events that sparked this approach, this angle.

The advantage of using this aspect to represent the theme, is that it can also cover the idea of shooting in places where others are pursuing recreational activity. We are providing less spots for smokers to light up, why are we creating more spaces for discharging of rifles?

I’m not saying that you would want to tackle this subject or write to this theme, but you don’t need to actively pursue an interest in Don’t Shoot, the song about having to tell someone not to shoot in this place. Or in Offshoot, a song that lists places where hunters and sporting shooters can go. It’s an exercise like any other.

A headful of Theme

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The theme of ‘Not With That Clown’ is in the subtitle ‘great songs of sexual jealousy’. We know the theme is sexual jealousy and then, being a various artists release, there will be different takes in each individual song. Whether it’s Billy Bragg in an odd signature or Paul Kelly declaring he’d rather go blind than “see you with another guy”, the theme remains throughout. It’s perfectly executed because the material has been selected to fit the theme rather than because there are contractual obligations or favours owed. This also has the effect of allowing the collection to wander in style and genre while remaining in the mood.

It doesn’t hurt that sexual jealousy is a powerful thing to write about, resonates with the listener (viewer/audience of some description), and features in chart busting songs aplenty

Nonetheless, even a calculated pitch can resonate if the delivery is superb. And if it sounds real that also counts.

Theme of a some place

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What immediately rushes to mind whenever I think of concept is the concept album. The way I would describe the concept is in taking the whole thing into consideration. ‘The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth’ could as easily serve as theme, subject, topic, as for title. There’s a mental shorthand we do when we think of the unfortunate spouses of a monarch with near absolute power and their respective fates. Whether this means a true critic would ignore what we know of the subject and divide each facet of this part of royal history up. I don’t see the need; not when it comes to knowing how to craft a song with the requisite strong concept driving the process.
The concept would be an LP (probably taking the natural division of the two sides into account) dealing with each of the wives in turn and framing this in a keyboard saturated musical environment that compliments each ‘story’

Likewise the concept of ‘Tommy’ is a rock opera about a deaf, dumb and blind boy who is amazingly proficient at the cool fad of the day, which happens to be pinball. That may not be the case, and there could be various reasons why he’s a pinball wizard and not a Mario kart wizard or Pacman prestidigitater (apart from Pete Townshend not being able to see into the gaming future)

So I see the concept as including the medium that the work is produced in and the way it is constructed, as well as the subject and theme. Concept is also a feature of preparation; often pre-dating the piece itself. You come up with the concept and from that a work emerges, with its own features. Obviously BBC producers and biographers have an interest in the six wives of Henry VIII and their concept would be different, even if the theme, subject, topic were the same as the Rick Wakeman album.

To draw in those other songs we’ve investigated under the topic of subject and the subject of topic, the concept is a little harder to get to in the space of one song but we can still say the concept of ‘Good Year for the Roses’ is a country song about suburbia. A feature of country songs is the repeated shattering of domestic bliss so that has to go in there.
The concept of ‘Rambling Man’ is a song celebrating the life of the drifter (with the songwriter having also masqueraded as a character called Luke the Drifter)

As with most synonyms, there is an easy passing between concept and theme, even if theme doesn’t take in the canvas or music sheet; the details of the narrative. A concept can also be cursory, needing the details to be filled in.

Them a tic

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Was I riffing with that last post on theme? Yes I was.

It’s not always easy to identify the theme, defined in Wikipedia as “central topic, subject, or concept the author is trying to point out”

The theme of ‘Rambling Man‘ by Hank Williams is compulsion to travel based on one’s God-given nature. You can argue the wording of this definition, but you get the drift: if you add the elements and listen to the narrative voice you get a fair picture.

It’s no wonder there has been confusion over theme and subject. Let’s take a look at another country artist’s song: ‘It’s Been a Good Year for the Roses’ by George Jones. Because the title is a counterpoint to the theme, subject and theme are separated in their meaning to some degree. The subject is an awkward meeting of lovers in the act of separation with the first person narrator recounting seeming domestic drudge distractions: ‘the lawn could stand another mowing’ ‘it’s been a good year for the roses’ but acutely aware of the real feeling in the room “the half-filled cup of coffee you poured and didn’t drink”

This is too much information for the theme. The theme would be divorce or strained relationship; the end of domestic bliss. Themes encapsulate rather than articulate.

What of the topic? The topic may be the same as the subject. There may even be an argument for the explanation proffered two paragraphs ago to be the topic, rather than subject. But consider the setting of an essay for exam conditions. This isn’t how you (necessarily) write a song but it gets across what a topic is in the scheme of things.
The topic is a rambling man. Because you’ve only got the half hour or the certain word count to do this in, the person assigning the topic has to keep it simple but potent enough with intent to allow you to come up with a good example and gain extra points. You don’t need to know what makes a man ramble to write an assignment on it; just use your imagination. The topic of a man whose urge to ramble is brought on by the sound of a train is not reliant on knowing anything else about him. Other rambling men may yet hitch rides into future song narratives and be quite different from the fellow in Hank’s song.

The topic in George Jones’ song is how the narrator is lead, through the hurt and ennui of the situation, to remark on the state of the garden.