What Do Your Songs Teach You?
The strength of any song often lies in its alignment between music and message. When music and lyric are working together, each is strengthened. Like so many songwriting tools, what sounds true isn’t necessarily as easily implemented while writing actual songs. In this article, I’d like to expand on the relationship between lyric and music, and suggest a few ways to ‘intuit’ this connection better while writing.
Below is a simple, repetitive lyric section. It utilizes the image of a ‘river’, and allows for some nice rhyme in lines three and six that helps make the ideas sound connected, as well as help the section come to a close.
The river flows
The river flows
And there’s no way to hold it back
I shoulda known
Shoulda known
Something simple as that
If this is all the lyric I’ve got…I’ve still got a lot. First, I’ve got the image of a river. What does a river sound like? Or said another way, what musical message reinforces this image of a river? On my instrument, my hands might immediately move towards a slower tempo, or a reflective, finger-picked progression. This approach seems in line with the overall mood of the lyric, and perhaps something I already ‘intuited’ from the lyric itself.
But my first impressions can come from my tendencies, and if I want to test those tendencies, I can call my choices into question. So recognizing that I’ve chosen a slow tempo and harmonic expression that sounds ‘reflective,’ I’m going to try something intentionally different. I might try a dramatically faster, tempo, or a hard blocky strumming pattern. The point here is that I am free to try whatever musical mood I want, and observe how the combination of lyric and music create a new personality when they’re paired together. Sometimes that new personality will be interesting to us, and other times the collision will dilute the power of each element, in which case they’re not creating something more potent and powerful together. All of this we can feel, as observers instead of creators. This distance helps us to respond to the unique situation each song presents. We’re free to explore, and free to change direction whenever we don’t love what we’re hearing. Back to the lyric.
Notice the repeated first line in line two? All that repetition in the lyric gives the listener time to take the message in. As I sing this lyric over a chord progression, I get to choose how quickly I move through the words. I could sing them with short notes and move quickly through the verse, or spread them out and involve long notes and even rest space. A verse on paper might look like six lines, but may take me four measures or even sixteen measures to sing. The pace with which I move through the lyric affects how much emphasis the listener feels is on the lyric, right down to how intensely the lyric is dripping with meaning. Let me explain.
This lyric very simply states that rivers flow, and that I should have remembered this simple fact. But songs do more than just deliver facts. They tell us what is significant or meaningful about the facts. Songs infer meaning whenever we are keen to let them.
Over a reflective mood and chord pattern, I think the song lyric might be inferring that you can’t stop a river from flowing, no matter how much you may want to. As an analogy, that message can relate to any number of real-life situations and people. I just need to let the meaning it holds for me surface, and then write about it. No song is just about the pictures themselves. The pictures are always symbols guiding us towards the real thing we’re writing about.
But something interesting happens when I set that same lyric over a fast tempo and a perky finger-picked pattern. If you’re having trouble imagining this, think Bluegrass. Read the lyric again, with that mood and feel in the back of your mind:
The river flows
The river flows
And there’s no way to hold it back
I shoulda known
Shoulda known
Something simple as that
Now the fact that the river flows has more momentum. I may interpret this verse as hard times come but hard times also pass. The musical mood generates the range of emotion through which I will feel the lyric take on a message.
The moral of the story is this: Lyric is no more good or bad than the musical moment in which it sits. The same may be said for the music we write. Judge either separately and you’ll wind up drawing conclusions that minimize the power and potential of each. Got a lyric that feels weak? Look to a new musical bed to provide new insights into its strongest personality. If your music seems lost, look to your lyric to pick up the slack and intensify the experience. Our songs have much to teach us if we’re willing to receive their messages.
If you'd like to dive into more lyric writing tools, come join me at one of my songwriting retreats.
Stay creative,
