The narrator takes offense and gets defensive because he’s being hustled by a hustler not unlike himself, as he used to be… when he was poor.

He admits to faults and flaws, he exposes his vulnerability and lack of empathy, but still he reacts with aggression to the threat to his identity that the beggar represents. There’s no happy ending. It’s a confrontation between a Have and a Have-Not… which is not resolved.

It doesn’t matter if the narrator of the song is Lamar or not. What matters is what is revealed in his monologue, interspersed with quotes from the homeless man.

The words are hard to separate from Lamar’s skills as a rapper. The lyrics are tremendous, but his flow, his phrasing and rhyming, the way he places the words rhythmically and uses his tone and timbre, along with the evocative music, brings his saga to a high level.

The song starts with a haunting chord progression that underlies most of the song, played by piano, bass, and drums (listen below). The piano and bass play 8th notes… but when the drums enter, the beat turns into a mournful shuffle, as the 8ths rub disquietingly against the shuffle triplets.

||: F | Gbmaj7 | Ab6 | Gbmaj7 :||

The 1st Verse asks the question, ‘How much a dollar cost?’, and sets the scene (‘Deep water, powder blue skies that crack open’). He’s feeling ‘big as Motombo’ in ‘this luxury car’. The man begs him for a little money – ’10 rand’; less than a dollar. The narrator, who immediately sees the beggar as a crackhead, simply turns him down. (‘I told him I ain’t have it and closed my door’)

How much a dollar really cost?
The question is detrimental, paralyzin’ my thoughts
Parasites in my stomach keep me with a gut feeling, y’all
Gotta see how I’m chillin’ once I park this luxury car
Hopping out feeling big as Mutombo
Twenty on pump six dirty Marcellus called me Dumbo
Twenty years ago, can’t forget
Now I can lend him a ear or two how to stack these residuals
Tenfold, the liberal concept of what men’ll do
Twenty on six, he didn’t hear me
Indigenous African only spoke Zulu
My American tongue was leery
Walked out the gas station
A homeless man with a semi-tan complexion
Asked me for ten rand
Stressin’ about dry land
Deep water, powder blue skies that crack open
A piece of crack that he wanted, I knew he was smokin’
He begged and pleaded
Asked me to feed him twice, I didn’t believe it
Told him, beat it
Contributin’ money just for his pipe, I couldn’t see it
He said, ‘my son, temptation is one thing that I’ve defeated
Listen to me, I want a single bill from you
Nothin’ less, nothin’ more’
I told him I ain’t have it and closed my door
Tell me how much a dollar cost

Then follow close harmonies (sung by James Fauntleroy) over a shockingly lush chord progression, an almost Brian Wilson-esque section which happens after each of the three Verses, but only once each time:

|| F | Db | Bb/C | Gbmaj7 ||

The lyrics, repeated each time, are a counterpoint to the harsh rap:

It’s more to feed your mind
Water, sun and love, the one you love
All you need, the air you breathe

The encounter doesn’t end with the shut door. The homeless man stares the narrator down (’Starin’ at me’, repeated – brilliant – six times)… and he takes the bait.

He’s starin’ at me in disbelief
My temper is buildin’, he’s starin’ at me, I grab my key
He’s starin’ at me, I started the car then I tried to leave
And somethin’ told me to keep it in park until I could see
A reason why he was mad at a stranger like I was supposed to save him
Like I’m the reason he’s homeless and askin’ me for a favor
He’s starin’ at me, his eyes followed me with no laser
He’s starin’ at me, I notice that his stare is contagious
‘Cause now I’m starin’ back at him, feelin’ some type of disrespect
If I could throw a bat at him, it’d be aimin’ at his neck
I never understood someone beggin’ for goods
Askin’ for handouts, takin’ it if they could
And this particular person just had it down pat
Starin’ at me for the longest until he finally asked
‘Have you ever opened up Exodus 14?
A humble man is all that we ever need’
Tell me how much a dollar cost

He responds defensively and angrily, with thoughts of violence. He can’t stand that this fool, this crack-smoking beggar, is disrespecting him. He can’t let it go. And to top it off the guy throws a Bible quote at him… about humility.

Guilt trippin’ and feelin’ resentment
I never met a transient that demanded attention
They got me frustrated, indecisive and power trippin’
Sour emotions got me lookin’ at the universe different
I should distance myself, I should keep it relentless
My selfishness is what got me here, who the fuck I’m kiddin’?
So I’ma tell you like I told the last bum, crumbs and pennies
I need all of mines, and I recognize this type of panhandlin’ all the time
I got better judgement, I know when nigga’s hustlin’
Keep in mind, when I was strugglin’, I did compromise
Now I comprehend, I smell grandpa’s old medicine
Reekin’ from your skin, moonshine and gin
Nigga you’re babblin’, your words ain’t flatterin’, I’m imaginin’
Denzel but lookin’ at O’Neal, Kazaam is sad
Thrills, your gimmick is mediocre, the jig is up
I seen you from a mile away losin’ focus
And I’m insensitive, and I lack empathy
He looked at me and said, ‘Your potential is bittersweet’
I looked at him and said, ‘Every nickel is mines to keep’
He looked at me and said, ‘Know the truth, it’ll set you free
You’re lookin’ at the Messiah, the son of Jehova, the higher power
The choir that spoke the word, the Holy Spirit,
The nerve of Nazareth and
I’ll tell you just how much a dollar cost
The price of having a spot in Heaven, embrace your loss, I am God.’

At first he reacts with honesty about his own vulnerability; his guilt, his resentment, his frustration.… but he immediately turns that into aggression (‘I should keep it relentless… My selfishness is what got me here’). He goes back and forth with the dude, who finally tells him he’s the son of God. But… is he nuts? Or is he just saying that, crackhead or no, he’s a child of God?

This last declaration, in terms of the sound of the words and the rapping (listen!), may be the most intense section in the song – the rhyme of ‘word’ and ‘nerve’… and ending with ‘Embrace your loss’!

There is a coda to this, sung by Ronald Isley, which feels like a closing prayer, a hopeful benediction (‘Help me change, right my wrongs’).

I wash my hands, I said my grace, what more do you want from me?
Tears of a clown, guess I’m not all what is meant to be
Shades of grey will never change if I condone
Turn this page, help me change, to right my wrongs

This final section also contains another different 4 bar chord sequence, unrepeated:

|| F | Eb (no3rd) | Db | Bb/C ||

In most songs you can only artificially separate the words from the music. It can be valuable to get a temporary look into any single aspect of a song, just as you would if you focused on a melody or chords. But in many songs – and this is one of them – the words can’t really be pulled out and have justice done to them.

Lyrics are not poetry – though some, like these, are quite poetic. They’re words that are inextricably blended with music.

(For a song about an encounter with some similarities to ‘How Much A Dollar Cost’ – including a wealthy narrator’s corrosively honest self-examination of their encounter with a Have-Not… who may actually have something the singer hasn’t got, and needs – check out my take on Joni Mitchell’s song ‘For Free” here.)

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I’m not recommending being lazy or not trying to make a song as good as it can be. But, to pick an example almost at random, it’s like a car… If you’ve got a motor, transmission, steering wheel, axles, wheels… the thing’ll run, even if it’s dented, the paint’s chipped, the fender’s falling off, etc.

I’m suggesting that focusing first on the essentials is a good habit to get into. Get those right and you can color in the rest around them.

So what are the most essential aspects of a song?

(Keep in mind that there quite a few songs out there that don’t get all of these right and are still great because the elements that are good about them are GREAT.)

• Title/Chorus. Having a strong central idea, a phrase or section of words and music that the song is organized around.

Often I don’t start with this; many writers won’t start without it. But it’s something that I’m always keeping an eye out for as I wander through the writing process. When I find it, other things tend to snap into focus. Or the opposite – it becomes immediately clearer when things don’t fit.

Many an otherwise great song has fallen short of its potential due to a weak central idea.

• Structure. This connects directly to the Title and/or Chorus.

Am I supporting it with the right structure? Should it be a Verse/Chorus song or an AABA song; or something else? Should it have a Bridge, a Pre-Chorus, a Tag? Is the length of the Verses and Chorus right, as well as the amount of Verses? Is it the right structure for the story that’s in the lyrics, and vice versa? Too long, or too short?

This also has to do with the momentum of the song. Is it moving along at the proper pace? If not, does something need to be shortened, cut, or extended?

• Melody. The not-so-secret (but too often ignored) weapon of great songwriting.

Remember, melody has two aspects – pitches AND rhythm. Does the melody have motion in the notes AND in the rhythm? (Don’t forget that the rhythm of the notes needs variety too!) Without movement, things quickly get static and boring. Does the combination of short notes and longer, held notes feel right?

* Harmony. This starts with harmonizing the melody, which creates its emotional subtext.

But it doesn’t end there. It also includes riffs or chord progressions that go beyond harmonizing, musical signatures that can be so important to the character of the song that it’s hard to imagine it without these trademarks.

* Lyrics. Why do I put this last? Lyrics are obviously crucial to a good song. But I’d venture to say that there are more good songs with weaknesses in the lyric than good songs with weaknesses in the other areas we’ve discussed.

This isn’t true for extremely lyric-focused songs. But a song with a great Title or Chorus, appropriate structure, powerful melody, great harmony and key riffs… can get away with a mediocre lyric. Again, I’m not advocating this as a writing strategy. It just seems to me to be the case… generally speaking.

But I still include lyrics as essential. Not just the content of the words. I include the sound of the words, which in songwriting is just as important as the content. (In fact it’s the main reason why sometimes lyrics with weak content can work – because they just sound right – even if they’re not!).

So, in getting your car to run, think first about the engine, the wheels, etc. When those are in place you can spend as much time as you want on the paint job and taking the dents out of the fender.

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Generally speaking, I try not to generalize… but there are certain things that do come up repeatedly when songwriters, including me, perform or present recordings of their songs.

One of the most common – and it’s very, very common – is that many of us tend to play or record our songs at a tempo that is too slow.

(I’m writing here about the overall tempo of a song; not speeding up or slowing down within it.)

I think there’s a tendency to want to stretch things out a bit to emphasize the song’s emotion, maybe to draw attention to the words or to the melody, so listeners don’t miss it.. Maybe lengthening the big moments of a song out will give it more impact…?

In my experience, the opposite is more often true. Ponderousness doesn’t add to impact. One of the things a song needs most (even a ballad) is momentum, drive. A too-slow tempo can drag the momentum down.

Is this always true? Of course not. Finding the ‘right’ tempo will always be subjective. (Recently a friend of mine who worked with The BeeGees told me of being at a recording session where the Gibb brothers argued at length about the effect of a tempo difference of one beat per minute on a song they were working on.)

It’s also true that getting nervous about a song’s impact can lead in the other direction – playing it too fast and diffusing its power that way. This is just as bad.

But far more common is songs played too slow. Here’s my suggestion. Unless your song is just naturally a fast song (in which case you might want to experiment with slowing it down) try speeding up your song just a little. Play it for more than a minute or so at the new, faster tempo – give yourself a chance to get used to it.

If the new tempo feels OK, try pushing it up another bpm or two. Repeat this process until it clearly feels wrong – too rushed; maybe the lyrics are now too jammed together or the emotion feels wrong. At that point lower the tempo back down; just a bit.

You’re probably now getting closer to something that’s ‘right’ for your version of the song. And it’s likely quicker than where you started. You can continue to fiddle with the tempo but you will have shaken out whatever sluggishness (if any) the tempo was adding.

When I do this I sometimes end up back at the original tempo. But more often I arrive at a brighter one that’s better for the song.

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What took me so long?

I always loved songs and early on had the desire to write my own. At the start I displayed no special songwriting talent. My fledgling efforts were not distinguished, and the musicians with whom I worked at the time let me know it (although arguably they could’ve been more supportive, they were right).

Additionally, my band had other songwriters around my age with strong writing talents that were already evident. I felt I couldn’t compete with them. I became discouraged.

I continued my songwriting, but in a desultory manner. I’d write for a while, think I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I’d stop. I repeated that cycle for years.

The more often I stopped, the more I felt it was too late to get serious about songwriting, or to have any success. I thought it was too late at age 25, age 30, age 35… etc. It was always too late.

However… I could never completely give it up. I always came back to writing songs.

As I plodded on (and off), my songwriting did gradually improve, but hitting the restart button over and over is no way to build up momentum. And the momentum one gets from consistency is crucial to excellence at anything (and in having a career).

Somehow at a certain point I understood that it was unlikely I would stop. Along with other changes that were happening outside and inside of me, I finally got it that my fear of writing would probably always be with me… and that there was no guarantee of any success…but that my desire to write would likely still be there no matter what.

I stopped fighting it. I understood all the practical reasons for not writing, including my always advancing age, but I also knew that if I didn’t write, those unwritten songs inside would continue to eat away at me. I realized I had to do it… and that I was finally willing to do it.

I started writing regularly. As best I could, I reserved specific times of the week that I committed to songwriting. The songs started to pile up at a steadier rate. And, not unrelated to the fact that I was more committed to the craft, some of the songs began to sound like something. I began thinking about performing them; something I had only done irregularly in the past.

There was a club I’d been playing with another band and I thought they’d give me a gig. I knew some great musicians who said Yes when I asked them to play that gig with me.

From experience I knew I had to play regularly for the band to add up to anything. I couldn’t and didn’t pay the musicians much and, after the first gig, I realized I couldn’t even afford that. I had to ask them to take a pay cut (after one gig!) if we were going to keep the thing going.

Miraculously, they all agreed. I had a band. After we played gigs for a while, my girlfriend at the time basically blackmailed me into recording (bless her). This became my first album.

This led to my second album and, almost now, my third. But I’ve found that though my commitment to writing regularly is solid, my commitment to recording the songs I’ve written is not so solid. In fact, it’s similar to my previous stop-and-start commitment to writing.

But it’s finally sinking in that if I don’t record more I’m not doing justice to the time and care I’ve put into my songs. My 3rd album will be out soon and I’ve increased and accelerated my recording and mixing time overall.

We’ll see how it goes. But I’ve learned it’s never too late… until it really is. The fact that I think it is… that’s usually just my brain talking shit to me.

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I may have begun with nothing – just messing around on the guitar, hoping I’ll bump into something interesting. Other times I start with a Title, a phrase, a couple of chords, a riff…

Something gets the wheels turning in a particular direction. I may not know yet what that direction is – which way is up? – but I follow along, hoping the idea will lead to another.

Often enough it does. But as one idea hopefully takes me to the next, and then the next, the possibilities multiply. For me, this can become an issue, especially with lyrics.

It’s like a chess game. With every move the options multiply, and each decision leads to more complex ramifications and consequences… and possible confusion.

Not that I deal with such a multitude of fantastic ideas! But I want my song to be as focused as it can be, as it needs to be. I want everything pointing in the same direction, telling the same story, even if from different angles. Not going in several different directions at once.

When writing anything, some decisions are more important than others. A song can become hopelessly muddled if I’m not clear about the big decisions, such as: What’s the song about, musically and lyrically? What’s the structure? What’s the overall tone? How do the music and lyric relate to each other?

There often aren’t literal answers to these questions. But if I can get a feel for what the heart of the song is, what its tone and vocabulary are, I can go by that.

If I don’t yet know my main direction, when too many directions are calling out to me at the same time, the song’s challenges get muddied, not clarified. It’s like my nose is so close to the paper I can’t read the writing on it.

This doesn’t mean I should give up, but it is when I find it useful to take a break, to work on something else for a while.

When I come back to the song later, usually on another day, I have some distance. What’s working and what isn’t is usually much clearer. And if what’s clear is that very little is working… well, I find that out too. More frequently, though, I see the song in a sharper light, illuminating the way for the decisions that follow.

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I was having trouble understanding what was going on at the beginning of the lyric, where you ‘set the table’ for the song. It’s a particularly bad place for lack of clarity because it muddies the rest of the song for the listener.

The first Verse is not only where you get the story or situation going, it’s also where you set the song’s terms – the context, the language, the narrator, the vocabulary, things like that. You create expectations, which you can then fulfill, confound, deny, surprise…

It turned out that this writer was confronting what can be one of the hardest parts of writing lyrics (and it sounds so simple): As Doc Pomus once put it to me, “Just say what you mean”. This writer wasn’t doing that here.

We went through the lyric line by line. When I got to phrases that confused me and asked him what he was trying to say, he repeated his original line and then said, “In other words…” and explained what he was trying to say… which was usually very clear, much clearer than the actual lyric. And often my response was, “Then just say that”.

Of course he’d have to do some work to get the thought to scan with the melody and sing easily, but at least he now knew what he wanted at that moment in the song.

I’ve said before that one of the best pieces of writing advice I ever heard came from author Barbara Kingsolver. When asked how she got her writing going when she was stuck, she replied that she simply asked herself, “What am I really trying to say here?”. And then she wrote down the answer.

Why is it sometimes so difficult to sing or write down the actual thought that comes next in a lyric? Where does the instinct, the impulse, to obfuscate, to be indirect, to beat around the bush, to not get to the point, come from? I wish I knew!

I grapple with this in my own writing. Sometimes saying, as did the writer I was working with, “In other words…” or asking myself, “What am I really trying to say here?” can help provide the right line or phrase.

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|| C | C | F | Fminor | C | G | C | C ||

In the key of C, the Fmajor chord (IV) is followed by the Fminor (IVminor), Fminor is not in the key of C major. But it’s still based around F. It adds some poignancy and even darkness to a chord progression which would otherwise be about as straightforward as can be – C, F, and G.

Although they weren’t the first to use it, I first became aware of this sound through the Lennon & McCartney Encyclopedia of Songwriting – the music of The Beatles. Paul McCartney was even quoted as saying that going from the IV major to the IV minor chord was the “natural thing to do”.

They used it in ‘In My Life’ (listen below), ‘I Call Your Name’, ‘You Won’t See Me’, ‘When I’m 64’, ‘Across The Universe’, ‘’If I Fell’, ‘Blackbird’, ‘Hello Goodbye’, ‘A World Without Love’ (Peter & Gordon)… I could go on… and on. (Incidentally John and Paul both used this device, in equal measure.)

It became perhaps the single most ‘Beatle-esque’ aspect of their songwriting. Because they did it constantly, they came to own it. And since Lennon & McCartney, along with Bob Dylan, were the most influential songwriters of their time, a lot of other writers started using this technique too. Originally to get songs to sound more ‘Beatle-esque’, but after a while it just became a common part of pop songwriting language.

Non-Beatle hit songs using the IV major to minor include Radiohead’s ‘Creep’, Green Day’s ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’, Oasis’s ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, and many many other songs, famous and obscure.

I run many songwriting workshops, so I hear a lot of songs from a lot of songwriters, and the IVmajor to minor has become very familiar to me; more so as the years have passed. Everyone with a little harmonic swagger knows it, and (almost) everyone uses it at one time or another… or more than that (including me!).

The other day I was walking through an almost empty department store. They were playing modern Christmas songs – not the classics, but new holiday songs by contemporary artists. And yes, many if not most of these Christmas songs used the IVmajor to IVminor.

This crystallized a thought I’ve had before: We may have too much of a good thing here.

The chords can still sound great but… They used to be a novelty. By now they’ve become such a familiar part of songwriting for some of us that, like The Beatles, it seems like the “natural thing to do”.

Also, I think it’s easy to use the IVmajor/minor thinking, “I’ve got this cool and clever trick that’s really going to make my song sound and feel a little different”.

It might sound good… but it’s not going to sound different anymore. Maybe even the opposite.

(Thanks to the Beatles Songwriting Academy for research on The Beatles’ use of this songwriting device.)

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A straightforward example is Adele’s ‘Rolling In The Deep’ Pre-Chorus:

The scars of your love they leave me breathless
I can’t help thinking

Then when she hits the Chorus, “We could’ve had it all… Rolling In The Deep…”, it’s incredibly effective; a textbook example of what a Pre-Chorus can do – building the feeling into a thrilling payoff.

Sometimes Pre-Choruses are there out of habit, because most songs have them and the songwriter thinks their song should have one too.

But sometimes they’re not necessary. A Pre-Chorus’s main function is to enhance other sections. If it’s not doing that job it’s useless – no matter how pleasing it is by itself – and it can be dispensed with.

The other way to go into a Chorus – the ‘old-fashioned’ way; going directly into the Chorus from the Verse – is something you don’t hear much anymore in contemporary pop. The surprise of the Chorus is what makes this a potent approach. Since there’s no section put there specifically to build into the Chorus, you’re just suddenly… there.

This smash cut, this sudden shift of consciousness… its contrast can be just as effective, in a different way, as a Pre-Chorus.

Sometimes it’s worth giving another listen to your Pre-Chorus. Or, more accurately, giving it a non-listen. If you have any suspicion that it might not be essential, try leaving it out. See what the song sounds like without a Pre-Chorus. Every once in a while it’s an improvement.

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I’ve been meaning to get around to a great song, ‘One More Robot’, from a favorite album of mine, ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’, by Flaming Lips. It’s the unexpectedly moving story of a robot in the future who begins to have feelings. Not your typical stuff.

It’s a beautiful song (as are many on the album) but the production adds so much subtext that it’s easy to miss how interesting the song itself is. For example, the way the melody is harmonized has a lot more going on than you notice at first. As usual, I encourage you to play and sing it.

Also unusual for a song that’s in some sort of rock vein (Flaming Lips are always very difficult to categorize), it’s almost as modal as it is chordal. Until it modulates, both the melody and the bass both stay in one mode – E Lydian (E, F#, G#, A#, B, C#, D#, E). But it hits the mode from so many different starting points, between the melody and the bass line, that you could name it differently (Ab harmonic minor, Bmajor…). And even after it modulates the melody stays in this mode for a while.

And that weirdly funky bass line! It makes it difficult to name the chords because it rarely stops moving, almost seeming to work against the chords at times. To get the chords of a song, I usually start by listening to the bass notes. Here that didn’t help much! Again, for a song in this vein, it’s extremely uncommon to have the bass line hop around in such an agitated, almost unhinged – but effective – way.

The lyric for the 1st Verse and Pre-Chorus:

Unit three thousand twenty one is warming
Makes a humming sound
When its circuits duplicate emotions

And a sense of coldness detaches
As it tries to comfort your sadness

In One More Robot words and music bear equal weight in carrying the song’s story. The parts that in the words are touched on lightly are fleshed out in the arrangement.

In the Verse, while the vocal and melody cavort modally, as describe above, there’s a relatively simple chord pattern. The Pre-Chorus introduces a chromatic note, out of the mode, in the melody – a G, which necessitates the Eb7 underneath. (By then the song needed a break from just the single mode.)

Here are the 1st Verse and Pre-Chorus chords:

||4/4 Abminor Abminor7 | Dbminor/E Dbsus/E | Abminor Abminor7 | Dbminor/E Dbsus/E |
| Abminor Abminor7 | Dbminor/E Dbsus/E | Abminor Abminor7 | Dbminor/E Dbsus/E ||

||4/4 Dbminor/Ab Eb7 |2/4 Abminor7 |4/4 Dbminor |
| Dbminor/Ab Eb7 | 2/4 Abminor7 |4/4 Dbminor | Dbminor ||

The Chorus lyric (not as eloquent as the previous sections but it sings great and, along with the music, gets the job done):

One more robot learns to be
Something more than a machine
When it tries the way it does
Make it seem like it can love
Cause it’s hard to say what’s real
When you know the way you feel
Is it wrong to think it’s love
When it tries the way it does

The Chorus chords move to another key while, interestingly, its first half still only uses notes (four of them) from that same Verse/Pre-Chorus mode. So although the chords modulate, the melody really doesn’t! The chords rise up in whole steps, using that Lydian raised 4th in another way.

Then in the second half of the Chorus the melody stays basically the same – except that now it’s up a whole step, and against a very different chord progression (starting with the Bbminor).

||4/4 Amajor7 | B | C# | B/D# | E | F# | Absus4 | Absus4 |
| Bbminor | Ab6 | Fminor | Bbminor | Ebminor | Ab6 | Bbminor | Bbminor ||

Like other Flaming Lips songs, One More Robot is touching in a strange way – sentimental, demented, a little schizzy, imaginative, emotional, gentle and disturbing at the same time. A lot going on.

(Songwriters: Dave Fridmann / Michael Ivins / Steven Drozd / Wayne Coyne)

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