This week I’m writing about one of the basic principles of Songwriting… but one that too often gets lost in the shuffle, particularly given how wide open lyric-writing options are at this moment in time.

Sometimes called Prosody (inaccurately, imho), it usually means singing words as you would speak them – putting the melody and lyric together in such a way that the words can be pronounced ‘naturally’.  It’s not a rule (what is?), but there are some excellent reasons why good songwriters are aware of this and use it – and when they don’t utilize it, it’s a conscious choice.

The idea of music helping lyrics to feel conversational and natural – putting the strong notes with the strong words – is an extremely powerful (indispensable really) songwriting tool.  It’s probably good in most cases to take advantage of it.  There can be times, for particular expressive reasons, to avoid it, but most of the time having a conversational flow to the lyric is a good idea.

Obviously, people’s speech patterns differ, so there are many ways to do make this happen – I’m not going to say a line the same way Christopher Walken does, for instance.  But when this is done right, no matter what the regional accent or idiosyncratic speech, the words sound natural when sung – that’s the key.

Everybody expresses themselves when they speak by emphasizing certain syllables.  And we do it differently depending on our mood, what point we’re trying to make, where we’re from… melodies heighten the impact of those words by supporting that emotional emphasis.

‘DO a DEER a FE-MALE DEER‘ – think about how that’s sung… just like you might say it.

‘I once had a GIRL or should I SAY she once had ME‘ – same thing… the melody supports the patterns of speech and – this is the point – emphasizes and strengthens the sound and meaning of the words.

‘BORN in the U–S–A‘.  He’s not singing ‘Born IN THE usa’… ‘In’ and ‘the’ are less important words, words you’d never emphasize when making this song’s point in a conversation.  ‘BORN‘ and ‘USA‘ are the important words.

A song I really like, with a great soaring Chorus, is Empire State Of Mind.  It shows examples of how to do this very well… and also in one instance not so well.

‘Big lights will inSPIRE you’ – note the perfect stress… the most important word gets the most important note.  Same thing on ‘Now you’re in NEW YORK‘.  Perfect.

Not so good is the line before these two, “These streets will make you feel BRAND new’.  To my ear that doesn’t feel like a very natural way to say/sing that line – it just doesn’t go with the melody very well..  Much better is the line that’s in the same place in the first half of the Chorus – ‘There’s nothing you CAN’T do’.  I’m not saying no one would ever say, ‘BRAND new’ (as opposed to ‘brand NEW’) but it doesn’t flow as naturally as the rest.

And remember, this conversational flow can contain almost any kind of ‘conversation’ – calm, friendly, loving, argumentative, mad, crazy…  Think of BILLIE JEAN IS NOT MY LOVER… MJ spits out every syllable just like the angry, defensive guy singing the song would.  So when I talk about the words sounding ‘natural’ and ‘conversational’ that’s not intended to be limiting at all.

But making the words and the music go together seamlessly in this way is not easy!  As much or more than any other skill you can mention, this is at the heart of the craft that one needs to practice and learn to be a skilled Songwriter.

Name me a great songwriter (or songwriting team) who doesn’t excel at this part of the game.  I don’t think you can.