Cheap Advice On Music

You’ve heard of summer movies, summer vacation, and summer school - but are you familiar with the concept of summer songs? If you remember the Beach Boys circa 1963-67 you are! “Surfin’ USA,” “California Girls,” “Surfer Girl” - they even had an album called “Summer Days (and Summer Nights!)”.

But it isn’t just the Beach Boys. Here are some songs by other artists that are deemed to be true “summer songs”:

(OK, that last one was the Beach Boys again, but it turned up on so many people’s lists that I just had to include it in this one!)

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If you are writing a poem with several stanzas, you don’t want to have a lot of repetition of words and phrases from one stanza to another. With the focus entirely on the words, the poem will be carried forward only with new ideas and new formulations. The structure of a stanza typically is duplicated in the next, but that structure is now occupied by an entirely new set of words and phrases.

With song lyrics, especially for rock or pop songs, this rule does not necessarily apply. With musical elements as well as words to carry the song forward, repetition and parallel elements between verses can provide that sense of structural familiarity that listeners like at the same time as the music and arrangement provide a sense of “progress” through the song.

The presence of music and melody allows you to utilize word structures, like repetition, that would not be viable in a free-standing poem. The realization that repetition is actually desirable for certain kinds of songs can make the job of lyric writing much easier! With appropriate development and use of musical textures, the fact that large parts of the verses are the same will not even register.

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Do you remember the poem Jabberwocky, from “Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There”? The first verse goes like this:

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Upon hearing the poem Alice declares, “Somehow it fills my head with ideas – only I don’t know exactly what they are!”

When I was in high school, I noticed that the student poems that won the prizes were not the ones about houses and trees and cars. The winning poems all had titles like “Purple Tangents” and lines about “the feral, livid hues of the banners of the blind” or some such imponderable image. I could never figure out what any of them meant, but I knew that they were Significant.

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As a songwriter, you may sometimes feel like you’re in a rut, like you keep coming up with the same basic ideas and situations to write about. One way to break out of this endless loop is to purposely write a new song dealing with something lightweight, funny, or just plain strange.

Let’s face it. Most pop and rock-type songs are about one and only one subject: good old-fashioned LOVE. That’s right, in music it’s always boy meets girl, boy loves girl, boy loses girl, singing about it the whole time. There are songs about being lonely and songs about being trapped. There are songs about good relationships, and even more songs about the others. And then of course there’s the physical side of things.

Back in the Ancient Days (i.e. the 50s and early 60s), most of the songs were about love all right, but there were always two or three “novelty type songs” on the charts and on the radio. The very first song I remember learning to sing along with was “Witch Doctor,” by David Seville, with its evocative chorus, “Oo ee oo ah ah, ting tang, walla walla bing bang.” Good stuff. There was also “The Purple People Eater,” written by Barry Cryer, about a creepy alien who….well, you remember. And who can forget David Seville’s Chipmunks? (Especially since they’re apparently still around.)

Some songs were basically about love, but with a novel take on the subject. Does anyone remember Dodie Stevens singing “Pink Shoe Laces,” written by Mickie Grant?

He wears tan shoes with pink shoelaces
A polka dot vest and man oh man
Tan shoes with pink shoelaces
And a big Panama with a purple hat band

It’s a little hard to picture the guy she’s singing about, but you have to admit they’re novel lyrics! Read the rest…

Every songwriter has a treasure trove of ideas for song lyrics all stored up and ready to be tapped, namely his or her own life story! Most of us have written songs about specific things that have happened to us, like falling in or out of love, or specific situations we have been in, like feeling trapped in a dead-end job or relationship. We can summon forth the emotions we felt at the time and capture them in lyrics that have the ring of truth.

The problem with using your own experiences and your own feelings when writing lyrics, though, is that you are not really using your imagination. You are mostly using your memory. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with musically documenting events and emotions from your own life. But imagination lies at the heart of creativity, and the more use you can make of it in your lyric writing, the better.

Another problem with writing about your own life is that you are just too close to it. You know too much! Not only that, but you are ego-involved in the situations in question (otherwise they wouldn’t seem important), which can prevent you from taking a broader view that would make for much better lyrics. Writing about someone else’s life removes the subjective element that can easily result in whiny-sounding, self-indulgent lyrics. (Do I need to name names here?) The desired result: less autobiography, more imagination.

One way to increase the IQ (Imagination Quotient) of your life-story lyrics is to practice (or at least think about) writing songs as if you were that person in the newspaper article you read this morning, as if you were that homeless man over there or the woman who had that problem in that movie. Whoever! Just so it’s not you again.

As a songwriter, you must always be aware of the life stories being played out around you. Put yourself in the place of the guy who’s looking worried as he waits for the bus. Snag some details. Is he smoking? Has he shaved? Make up a story for him that would explain what you’re seeing. Then write a song about that story, from his point of view. Now that’s using the old imagination! Read the rest…