Since it's an OT day, I thought I'd share some ideas about songwriting. Due to work, I listen to quite a bit of original music of all different genres. One consistent issue today, IMO, is the paucity of rich vocabulary and visual imagery in lyrics.
Now, don't get me wrong, repetition and simple language can certainly have their very effective way in music. Most dance music doesn't need wonderful imagery because the beat is paramount and the words become important only if they add to the beat and dance Think YMCA for example. There's a reason that song is still played at weddings forties years later. People still love Louie Louie and Tequila even though the lyrical qualities are non-existent. In another genre -- Amazing Grace is a song of simple language but it's remarkably powerful. Most modern praise music, in contrast, consists of simple language of little meaning or power and definitely no transcendence. And my personal opinion is that a lot of current "rock" music sounds like a guy grunting because he needs a laxative.
Earlier this year, Leonard Cohen and Chuck Berry were awarded the first PEN Award for Songwriting. (For more information on the award:
www.rollingstone.com/music/news/chuck-berry-leonard-cohen-get-first-pen-songwriting-awards-20120227 ) During Bob Dylan's speech, he called Berry the Shakespeare of rock and roll. I started thinking about Berry's song lyrics and I could recall many bits and pieces of them quite quickly because I could "see" the stories of them in my head. Then once I remembered a bit here and a piece there, I could quickly remember entire lines. I then remembered my college music history professor's comment that Berry's words were "genius" because they immediately gave you a visual and in three minutes, told an entire story.
So I was poking around and found two articles people may find interesting because the authors are stating what makes a "good" song particularly in terms of lyrics. Here a commentator talks about the elements necessary for a "good" song using the song Johnny B Goode:
Deep down Louisiana close to New Orleans
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens
There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood
Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode
Who never ever learned to read or write so well
But he could play a guitar just like a ringing a bellWhat's even more interesting to me is that Berry describes his songwriting as being written with one purpose in mind -- to sell his music to make money.
It struck me that Berry's avowed intention to write songs to which the music-buying public could relate so he could make money nonetheless did not prevent him from writing -- however inadvertently -- songs of amazing visual imagery, storytelling and active vocabulary.
So what do you all think lyrics should or need to do for them to create a "good" song according to
your definition?
