In another thread on "The Bar" forum, I commented that I thought the essence of songwriting was fitting the natural rhythms of speech to the natural rhythms of music. MartynRich said he didn't really understand what I meant, so I thought I'd give a detailed example of the sort of thought-processes I typically go through when I construct a lyric. The post is a bit long for the forum so I've put it
here. I'd be interested to know if other people construct lyrics in a similar fashion, or what processes they use instead.
It's not always a struggle, of course. Sometimes, in a flash of inspiration, a line will come to me perfectly formed, rhymes, scansion and everything, and I feel terribly pleased with myself. But more often than not it's this tortuous process of writing and re-writing to get everything to fit in.
I know I'm not the only one who works like this. I have a friend who also writes comedy and she operates in a similar, though not identical, fashion - she writes down pairs of rhymes on slips of paper and then works out lines to fit them, eventually piecing them together in a sort of jigsaw fashion. (I know this because we collaborated a couple of times.)
The method isn't unique to comedy either. I have in front of me a fascinating volume by one of the greatest lyricists of the 20th century, Ira Gershwin, called "Lyrics on Several Occasions". He sets out a large number of his lyrics and then describes the processes by which the lyrics were written, in some detail. (The section on "It Ain't Necessarily So" is particularly interesting - it started out as a dummy lyric and actually became the song.) It's worth getting hold of if you're interested in the songwriter's craft.
Comments please?
