As far lyrics go, where the rubber meets the road is how the words Sing. Why do some verses or sections of my songs ‘sing’ better, easier, than others? Because I got the sound of the words right.
The hardest-to-define aspect of a lyric, and therefore the most neglected, is the sound of the words. Words in songs aren’t read off a piece of paper. They’re felt as sounds. The best songwriters never forget this.
Many times I’ve heard people say – I’ve said it myself – that they really like a particular song even though they either don’t know what the words are… or they know what they are but but have no idea what they mean. But they like the song anyway. This is usually because the words sound right; they feel good for the song… whatever they are.
On a very basic level, songs are all sound, and the words are just part of the sound you hear when you hear the song. And the literal meaning is often separate and different from what you think it is.
A lot of songwriters start with the sounds of words and put together the meaning later. I’m not saying this is the ‘right’ way to do it, but it’s one of the ways that works for many good songwriters. And when it really works, the sound and the meaning come together.
Recently I listened to a recording of the Beatles learning and playing George Harrison’s just-written song ‘Something’ (I’ll post this below). One of the fascinating things about it was listening to John Lennon urge George, who seemed self-conscious about not having all the lyrics finished, to just sing anything that sounded OK, and trust that the right lines would emerge.
Anyway, it got me thinking that not only was Lennon great at the sounds of words, but that he wrote several songs that were all about the sounds… basically nonsense songs that, on a primal level, please the way that children’s songs do. But the lyrics also reveal meaning in surprising ways and places, and sometimes go a lot deeper than you’d expect – and sometimes not; which is OK too. The Lennon songs I’m thinking of are ‘Come Together’, ‘I Dig A Pony’, ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’, and – a masterpiece – ‘I Am The Walrus’.
Here’s a great quote from Lennon about what he was up to in these songs – “I was just having fun with words. You just take words and you stick them together, and you see if they have any meaning. Some of them do and some of them don’t.”
It was fine with him (and very post-modern) to let the meaning more or less take care of itself, to let the listener connect the dots, if any. Remember too that in all these songs he never abandoned the basic traditional structures of songs – though he bent them a little, of course. This allowed him (and others – David Byrne comes to mind) to stretch the limits of ‘meaning’ while still delivering many of the basic pleasures of a traditional song – Choruses, strong titles, great melodies, powerful rhythms and grooves.
Some other songs where the sound of words combine with music and meaning in a sublime way: Becker and Fagan’s ‘Babylon Sisters’ (Steely Dan), Chuck Berry’s ‘You Never Can Tell’, Arlen and Harburg’s ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’, Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’.