How candid are you in your lyrics?

[symphonious7]

43 minutes ago, HoboSage said:

That's the way it's supposed to be, Chris.  Communication involves both sender and receiver, and how the receiver takes it it perhaps the most valuable feedback of all.

Never thought of it like that but you're right.  Maybe I'll start doing more lyric reviews  

[Ray888]

As long as there are listeners that can relate to a lyric it is fine. It is also important that the storyline unfolds with a little more information unfolding in each verse in order to retain the interest of the listener. Chorus or hook should kick home the crux of the story. Having stated the above it is not something set in stone because there have been plenty of song lyrics that have charted that defy logic.

[john]

15 hours ago, fasstrack said:

I met a guy who was a roadie for Bob Dylan---who was always being 'interpreted', and by people talking outt their.....s.

He told me that someone had parsed Visions of Joanna---and wrote a lengthy essay on how and why the song and characters were a metaphor for America (in the 60s). Supposedly, Dylan read it, chuckled, told my friend

 

'I was just writing about these people waiting for friends to come home one night'.

 

So much for 'reading into'.

 

In my own work, I was guilty of 'inside jokes'---putting the word 'up' on an upbeat, hidden quotes from tunes---it was unconscious, sometimes I didn't realize I'd even done it til after the fact.

 

Then I wrote a song for the Jazz Foundation of America with another of  their clients (they're a NY and NO musician's charity),  the late Jimmy Norman. Jimmy's best known song is Time is on My Side---lyrics he wrote for Irma Thomas, first instrumentally covered by trombonist Kai Winding before the Stones monster hit.

 

I brought him an inspirational song, You're My Foundation, a tribute to the JFA. I wanted to collaborate partly b/c I didn't like all my lyrics, also I figured it would be a good press angle ('2 clients give back to the organization that helped them in crisis' type-deal). 

 

So Jimmy and I hung a bit as we worked (we finished the night of Obama's first victory---with the results in the background over the TV!), and got to know each other's habits. I showed him some tunes I thought were awfully clever---and he taught me a valuable lesson in getting over that. 

 

'What good are 'inside jokes that only you get?' 'No one likes work from anyone who thinks they're smarter. Write something UNIVERSAL'.

 

That was a rude awakening...  

 

 

While I completely agree with what you are saying, I think there is room for layered lyrics... but there is a lot to learn about writing broader appeal lyrics, by learning about layers of meaning, if for no other reason than it helps you really consider perspective and nuance. It really makes you think about how people connnect with a song. Even where the lyrics are largely “la, la, la, la, la, la, la”. Writing songs where there is a broad, more instant appeal, but written in such a way that there is meat on the bone for those who ponder on lyrics. Not “in jokes” so much as deeper meaning. Deeper connection. Lyrics that allow you, the listener, to have different perspectives. Lessons learned, it then becomes less about writing in deeper meanings, hidden perspectives,  and more about writing in a way that lets the song breathe, in a way that lets perspectives and interpretations to exist.

 

You mention smarter, and same goes. Use too flowery, too intellectual a language, and people don’t connect. Still, it shouldn’t always be about a lowest common denominator approach.

 

While songs can say something, make a definite statement, with every statement on group will identify more with a song, another group will identify less with a song. Sometimes that is inevitable. Sometimes it isn’t.

 

For me much is about the connection. Writing something that both has a broad appeal, yet feels personal and evocative.

 

For example, if I write “Sue broke my heart” people who have had their heart broken will identify with that, but a little less if their heart wasn’t broken by Sue. People who have had their heart broken by a Sue will strongly identify with it.

 

”She broke my heart” leaves more room for interpretation, but it feels a little impersonal. Anyone who identifies with having their heart broken by a woman can easily connect. Those who have had their heart broken by a man, a little less so.

 

”You broke my heart” feels much more personal. Conversational lyrics often do It has broad appeal, and doesn’t overly fence people in. Indeed, it often allows the listener to have a voice they wish they had, to say what they never had a chance to etc.

 

There is a balance to be had.

 

Was going to say more but gotta dash... ttyl

[john]

21 minutes ago, fasstrack said:

Bottom line: as long as our work---and I mean this as a jazz improviser also---has something of others' lives in it---the thing is to trust our listeners' ears, and their life experience. No need to telegraph things or play or write down to people, just TO them. Formulas to get this or that reaction may work, but, as a wag wisely said: 'you can fool some of the people some of the time'. W.C. Fields had an amusing take, I think after he got a laugh or something: 'Fooled 'em again!'.

 

No need to fool or earnestly target audiences by changing work that is already fine on its own merits. Let's be ourselves---and be patient. I've always had a small audience---and THEY'VE had ME, b/c I do good work (meaning I prepare before performing and rehearse the band, etc., not that I'm Einstein) and trust their ears and souls. I doubt that at 63 I'm gonna be a big shot, and who CARES? As long as I get the kind of gigs where the audience is cool and the joint pays decent, a LITTLE respect----and I make a bit of bread on my songs or other compositions, through film, commercials, etc., I'm cool. Just not giving the store away for nada like these kids (at my age, EVERYONE"S a kid---LOL) do, so eager for 'exposure'. I'll use the Web smarter, to find real paying clients.

 

OK, thanks for that, and I'm out...

 

Formulae are useful as learning tools, perhaps. Understanding song form, for example, is useful as a set of guidelines for sectional songwriting, No different to learning a major triad chord. The trouble comes when we take formula as absolute rules that MUST be adhered to. The adherence is conditional on certain assumptions... and accepting that breaking adherence has consequences which may or may not be desirable.

 

People like rules as opposed to guiding principles. It’s funny that no matter how many times it is underlined that songwriting is based on guidelines, many songwriters still treat them as absolute rules.

 

As to writing to get this reaction or that. Surely both audience and writer and performer all enter into communicating knowing the basic vocabulary. Musically we generally have a fair understanding of what sounds angry, or relaxed, or even romantic We use that vocabulary when writing or performing. We use our vocabulary to express ourselves... and part of that is to be understood. If an audience booed everything we do, we would likely change it because, well no one enjoys being booed. Likewise if we thought we were saying one thing, but everyone took the opposite from it, we would likely examine what we said it and how we said it.

 

If by simple knowledge we know that more people will connect with our song, is it any different whether we express ourselves using a B over G Major, or D over G Minor? If we use simple words so more people understand us over less common words, or use ‘you’ over he/she?

 

Music is almost a universal language. The same does not apply to words. If I go to Egypt and keep relying on people who speak my language to help me get by, it might be a real problem. Chances are I will often fail to be understood... especially when talking of complex issues and abstract concepts. We choose words to be understood all the time. No formula. No trick. Just a basic concept of communication.

 

Just an opinion lol All good, horses for courses, each to their own etc etc

[Alen Karamarko]

I write exclusively about the stuff that happened to me and things i felt, but not in a obvious way, so I can let the listener create his own version of it, and im not bothered at all if someone gets it all wrong from what it was meant to be.