A very common songwriter’s dilemma is to have a melody line and a lyric for that melody… the melody seems right, and the lyric is saying what I want it to say… but they don’t quite fit together.

Often the lyric is a little short or long… and that’s what I work on adjusting.  But sometimes adjusting the melody to the lyric idea, instead of vice versa, can lead the melody (and sometimes the whole song) to a more interesting place.

When a song is getting started, quite often the melody takes a pretty defined shape, or seems to, before all the lyrics are finished.  A big part of the songwriter’s game is fitting a bunch of different verses with that same melody and making them all feel natural.

So, once the melody seems settled, that appears to be more about adjusting the words; saving a syllable here, adding a word there.

However, what I’ve found lately is that sometimes letting the words change the melody can lead to interesting results.  I’m now more open to the possibility of, if I have a lyric I like, changing the melody to work with that lyric phrase – although, to me, at first that seemed counterintuitive.  But now that I’ve tried it, when it feels right to do so, it can lead me to some results I like, and that I never would’ve gotten to otherwise.

I’m not saying I always go this way.  But it is a way to go… that I used to mostly ignore.

And I’m not suggesting this as an ‘easy way out’; a way to avoid the work, often hard, of making lyrics (particularly in Verses) all fit with the melody.  That challenge remains.  But sometimes the most conventional solution isn’t the best.  This alternate approach I’m suggesting is no easier.

The words and melody still have to fit together hand-in-glove.  It’s just an an alternative way to go about it – and maybe of being open in a different way to what the song is suggesting to me as I write it.