Lyric craft

[Jim of Seattle]

Also, regarding the setting up of Seuss and then breaking it, I think the whole point of music is setting up an expectation and then breaking it in fun ways. If it wasn’t, we’d all still be singing plain chant.

Arrgghhhh!!! That's very very different from just deciding you don't want to work hard enough to continue the rules you've already set up for yourself. It's all too easy to claim you're being expressive when you're really giving in to easy decisions.

"There's pepper in this chocolate pudding"
"Yeah, I set up an expectation and then broke it. I'm being expressive."

We don’t need to have lines be all iambs or dactyls to be “well crafted.”

To be clear, I never said that in case you're implying I did. I don't know those crazy metric terms, I've never learned them. And I definitely don't think we need to stick to or even know any of them really. They seem pointlessly academic to me.

My definition of "craft" is working hard to ensure the lyrics are most effective at doing their job. While a well-crafted lyric doesn't need to adhere to a pentameter or structure or anything, it DOES need to have been carefully thought-through and chosen after careful consideration. It has to be WORKED ON. It's in the eye of the beholder to a certain extent. People like you and I, for example, may wince if someone rhymes "tree" with "family", whereas someone just starting out might not notice that. And yet, perhaps we're both typing this in rooms with rugs we bought for $69 at Ikea, while that aforementioned beginner lyricist, who happens to be a rug aficionado, wouldn't be caught dead with one of those in her house. We think she's being overly geeky about rugs. This $69 one is pretty and serves the function well enough, but she's got a finer tuned eye for rugs and sees all kinds of reasons the Ikea rug is decidedly inferior. She just can't understand how we can live with those cheap rugs. Everybody's got something they appreciate the fine-tuned craft of, and we're here in a songwriting group where we are invited to offer critiques, so there we have it.

[Cybronica]

I dunno, man, it just seemed to me the moment I listened to his song that the lyrics had been well crafted. I thought they were funny, lyrical, and perfect for the piece he was writing. I think it’s hard to say, “upon listening to this, it’s clear you made no effort!” We don’t know how hard he worked. We weren’t there.

[Jim of Seattle]

I dunno, man, it just seemed to me the moment I listened to his song that the lyrics had been well crafted. I thought they were funny, lyrical, and perfect for the piece he was writing. I think it’s hard to say, “upon listening to this, it’s clear you made no effort!” We don’t know how hard he worked. We weren’t there.

Agreed. It's hard to say that. Which is probably why I never said that. If my computer clipboard remembers correctly, what I said was "I do like some of the lyrics that respect syllabic rhythm. "Why do my headphones get caught in my legs" is pure Suess, for example. But alas, you don't maintain that discipline on every line."

[AJOwens]

I dunno, man, it just seemed to me the moment I listened to his song that the lyrics had been well crafted. I thought they were funny, lyrical, and perfect for the piece he was writing. I think it’s hard to say, “upon listening to this, it’s clear you made no effort!” We don’t know how hard he worked. We weren’t there.

Agreed. It's hard to say that. Which is probably why I never said that. If my computer clipboard remembers correctly, what I said was "I do like some of the lyrics that respect syllabic rhythm. "Why do my headphones get caught in my legs" is pure Suess, for example. But alas, you don't maintain that discipline on every line."

Yes, it was only later that you exposed your view that it's lazy work. And let's be clear: the whole entry is lazy work. I knocked it together the night before. But when I went with "Why, when I have a song" instead of "when I have a new song" or "good song" or "Why, when I've finished my song," was it because I didn't consider the possibilities, and just settled for bad work because I couldn't be bothered? No, quite frankly. I liked the choice I made, and my aesthetic happens to allow for liking it even though it's not metrically perfect, or even because it's metrically imperfect. I'm just defending my aesthetic. You, on the other hand, have gone from implying I'm lazy to calling me dishonest, just because I don't happen to agree with your aesthetic.

But as I said elsewhere, I don't think of you as a dick; you're just badly wrong sometimes.

[fluffy]

now THAT's a signature quote if I ever heard one

[Jim of Seattle]

Somehow something went awry here. I didn't mean to call you dishonest if that's what was taken. Sorry about that.

So, getting back on track, this is interesting. Personally, I like new song, good song, and finished a song better, because they follow the meter. (Also, when i'm writing a lyric and find that I actually have an extra syllable, it's like striking gold. Oh the possibilities!) However, at that point in the song, the metrics of the lyrics hadn't yet been established, so I didn't even know there was one at that point. It was only at about BSOD did it start to occur to me that you might have been following that meter all along. It was spoken after all, so not necessarily obvious. So then on the next listen through I tried to hear the whole thing in that meter. and it's not just the raw count of syllables you're doing, all the stresses are in the right place... on many of the lines that follow it. so I'm wondering why you like plain old "song" better?

Also, for me once I strike upon some clever thingamajig, either I'm doing it on purpose or it's out. So say I'd stumbled upon the delicious flow of the BSOD line, and then maybe I'd notice I had the same rhythm in the equally delicious headphones lines. At that point I'd insist to myself that that meter has to be there every time, otherwise it would be exposed as accidental.

I'm working on a piece where I had this verse:
Security men are on the way sir
Security men are on the way
We know just which ones,
We know just when
We know security men
Are on the way, sir
It's followed by about six verses that follow that structure. But this was the first one, and that rhyme of "when" and "men" near the end was unintentional. Singing it through though, I decided I liked it. And here's the thing: Once I noticed it, I couldn't un-hear it, and all I noticed was that the rhyme wasn't also in every other verse. So my options (to myself at least) were to either get rid of that line because of the unintended rhyme, or else do that rhyme on every verse. For better or worse, I decided on the latter, which meant throwing out five other verses and coming up with new verses that would have that rhyme in it. Cut to like a week later, and now it sounds much more satisfying, because that "men" rhyme is there every time.

There are approximately 162,000 ways of writing a good song, give or take. I'm not going to try and tell anyone what is the right way that I think is the way that's right. Or at least I'm trying to try not to. I know I'm pickier than most everyone here. I don't take this stuff lightly, which is probably one reason I don't submit songs more often. For me, songwriting is a lot of hard work. Especially the lyrics. I'm probably jealous of people who can be more casual about it and put songs out every week. So can we all just channel our Dalai Lamas and go with the likely truth that Jim holds songs to higher standards than is probably welcome, warranted or wise?

[owl]

buncha defensive stuff

See? Told you I didn't want to jump in the pit.

I don't own this genre of music or even make music in it, so I wouldn't characterize it as "defensive" so much as "pointing out that your example didn't really demonstrate anything to me," but OK

I'm interested in your opinion if you are coming at it from a technical point of view, because it's clear you think a lot about lyrics.

If the actual answer about why you don't like rap is "I just don't like it" without any actual songcraft-related reasons, just purely as opinion/emotional reaction/personal bias/whatever (or if the answer is "I haven't listened to that much rap, actually") then that's fine, let's leave it at that.

If you really just don't like variations in rhyme and meter, that's a fair answer, too. (but geez, doesn't that get boring?!) Who are your favorite lyricists? Are you a musical theater guy?

I love metaphors, allusions, complicated rhyme schemes, wordplay, and skillful and varied rhythmic delivery, and there are so many rap songs that value and deliver all those in spades. This is one of my favorite songs, I think it's just beautiful, and I had chills the first time I read the Genius page and realized how many layers of meaning were packed into the seemingly simple first part of Common's verse that I hadn't ever even noticed.

Also, sure, yes, there is a difference between being lazy and saying "I did that on purpose" and breaking a "rule" deliberately because of craft, intuition, and feeling.

When I think about italian operatic recitative or latin epic poetry, those forms would use a lot of mixed meter.
Take, for example, Dactyllic Hexameter: This type of verse need 6 feet, the last two of which must be a dactyl followed by a spondee. That means -..|- - and the other four can be either trochee (-.) or dactyl (-..). There are a couple other rules pertaining to pauses in the line, but those are the basics.

Interesting, can you give some specific Italian examples of this? I speak Italian, but I'm not particularly familiar with opera lyrics. But I'm curious about how this sounds in Italian.

[Jim of Seattle]

Yeah I came from musical theatre, and that's definitely where I learned a lot of songwriting chops, and I listened to it a ton growing up and into my 30's. But, and I can't stress this enough, I can't stand musicals now. You couldn't pay me enough to sit through Hamilton, I've not seen or heard any of Frozen, etc. etc. But the style is in my DNA, for sure.

My thing about rap is first and foremost that signature pissed off tough guy delivery. Singers used to actually smile and mean it, and they were with you. Rappers always look like they hate me, hate themselves, hate life, and are irredeemably angry. Even when they're talking about something not angry, there's that tough angry delivery that really puts me off. Where's the vulnerability?

[Æpplês&vØdkã]

JJust chiming in about the signature "pissed off tough guy delivery" ... I can think of so many exceptions to this. To pick a particularly well known example, Kendrick Lamar rarely sounds pissed off or angry for that matter. He's not much for the signature braggiadocio at all, has a habit of composing well written lyrics that tackle some serious issues, which mediocre lyrics only a rarity.

And that's a defense of an artist I really don't care for much. Danny Brown is almost never aggressive, almost never pissed off, though he alternates between that goofy, inappropriate "let's come up with a stupid sex joke" attitude and then talking about serious issues with his life or town or whatever.

You wanna go back further, there's the whole "conscious" rap that was all over the 90s with folks like the native people's collective: a tribe called quest (ignore georgie porgie, it's an outlier) and de la soul. They were rarely pissed off!

I'd keep going but really...while I can definitely think of a few newer rappers who DEFINITELY have that intense shouty tough style (Daniel Curry being one of my favorites of those), it's hardly a majority these days.

[owl]

Yeah I came from musical theatre, and that's definitely where I learned a lot of songwriting chops, and I listened to it a ton growing up and into my 30's. But, and I can't stress this enough, I can't stand musicals now. You couldn't pay me enough to sit through Hamilton, I've not seen or heard any of Frozen, etc. etc. But the style is in my DNA, for sure.

My thing about rap is first and foremost that signature pissed off tough guy delivery. Singers used to actually smile and mean it, and they were with you. Rappers always look like they hate me, hate themselves, hate life, and are irredeemably angry. Even when they're talking about something not angry, there's that tough angry delivery that really puts me off. Where's the vulnerability?

I think the answer to "why are they so angry" is "the entire historical and societal context of where hip-hop came from." (It's gone plenty of vulnerable, non-angry places these days, too, as Æpplês&vØdkã mentions.) But anyway, that's beyond lyrical craft and into execution and style...

[Jim of Seattle]

Yeah, well I didn't say that lyric craft was the front lobby of the Why I Hate Rap Building, just that it's one of the rooms. That tough guy style is probably first and foremost, followed by a whole "we're-too-cool-to-sing" vibe, then maybe the sloppy lyrics. And even if some artists transcend that, it's still a big part of the genre, and is never far under the surface. Plus I'm harmony-forward in my music appreciation anyway. Chord changes and melody and then arrangement and (this thread notwithstanding) maybe then lyrics.

Whenever I've denigrated hip hop as a whole genre, I'm invariably replied to with all these wonderful exceptions to that rule. But they are, you have to admit, exceptions. I think most people have to dig a genre for genre's sake before they are eager to sleuth out the exceptions. And I don't think the exceptions are enough to justify the rest of it. I've got nothing against people who like it, and like all musics, 90% of it is not very good. One's opinion of an entire genre of music is going to be formed on the median, not on the few noble triumphs.

Undoubtedly over time, the cream of the crop will stick around, and all the "undercream" will be forgotten, and in fifty years people will crow the names of the best rappers as representative of the genre in general. But we're not there yet.

[fluffy]

90% of everything is crap. There is no genre that is universally great, and all the stuff you like is going to be exceptions to the average.

I can't think of a single genre I enjoy where that isn't the case, anyway.

[Jim of Seattle]

all the stuff you like is going to be exceptions to the average.

I don't think that's true. Most people have a "home" genre, wherein they like maybe, I don't know, maybe 50-70% of it. But any "away" genre, what you're saying is probably true.

[fluffy]

Okay so test this theory. Find a genre you think you like a lot of, and then browse it randomly (without a popularity filter) on, say, bandcamp or CDBaby. See how you feel after an hour of that.

[Æpplês&vØdkã]

Okay so test this theory. Find a genre you think you like a lot of, and then browse it randomly (without a popularity filter) on, say, bandcamp or CDBaby. See how you feel after an hour of that.

I do this all the time on bandcamp. It's led me to a lot of artists that I've discovered that I really, really adore. But it's led me to a whole lot of mediocre albums that only have one or two decent tracks on them. Like lately I've been digging darkwave A LOT. But for every Drab Majesty or Lebanon Hanover you find, there's like 20 acts that either put some generic gothy looking cover and play endless uninspired "pulse bass over Linndrum" tracks or put some 80s looking neon shit on the cover and try to sound like the stranger things theme with a vocalist and the same drum samples.

And don't even get me started on death metal subgenres, bandcamp slam is so densely populated with misses that it's hardly worth digging through the gurgles chugs and blastbeats

[AJOwens]

Somehow something went awry here. I didn't mean to call you dishonest if that's what was taken. Sorry about that.

That was the part about someone being lazy and then pretending it was deliberate, but I think you were speaking generally.

so I'm wondering why you like plain old "song" better?

Because "Why, when I have a new song and am able" jams in "new" so quickly that it might as well not be there, and packs the word "song" into less space than it needs, and doesn't add anything interesting to the meaning. In this particular line, the extra syllable creates a "bouncy awkwardness," as I said before, a sort of Seussian rhythmic insistence for its own sake that amounts to a distraction. It just has less of a soul than the line without the word.

The alternative "Why, when I've finished a song and am able" is more palatable but wordier, and since I had no objection to the punchier formulation, I didn't have any reason to be wordier.

But to each his own. I do like the fact that your reviews go beyond the polite "Good job!"

[Jim of Seattle]

That was the part about someone being lazy and then pretending it was deliberate, but I think you were speaking generally.

Most definitely. I don't think you were being lazy, though I also don't think it was deliberate. I think your aesthetic for that particular lyric, but certainly not for all your lyrics, was different, and when I caught hold of the strict meter I suddenly held the whole lyric to that standard and was perplexed that some lines that easily could have didn't also adhere to it.

Because "Why, when I have a new song and am able" jams in "new" so quickly that it might as well not be there, and packs the word "song" into less space than it needs, and doesn't add anything interesting to the meaning. In this particular line, the extra syllable creates a "bouncy awkwardness," as I said before, a sort of Seussian rhythmic insistence for its own sake that amounts to a distraction. It just has less of a soul than the line without the word.

The alternative "Why, when I've finished a song and am able" is more palatable but wordier, and since I had no objection to the punchier formulation, I didn't have any reason to be wordier.

Huh, interesting. OK, well maybe because it's spoken anyway and there's no tune it doesn't really matter. I personally would have enjoyed hearing that meter on every line. I know for a fact that I would have had to continue to chew on that line before I was satisfied. Come to think of it, I probably wouldn't have even been satisfied with "and am able", because I would have thought "able to what?". I would have decided it didn't make quite enough sense, even though part of me would have kept telling me to get over it and move on. All big reasons I don't write for Song Fight more often, I suppose.

Which reminds me that I've been a terrible collaborator my whole life, partly because I get like this. I'm not like this only when reviewing other peoples' music, but my own as well. Most of my lyrics need to be tugged on and twisted and put under all manner of tortures before I deem it worthy. Finally after days of struggle I will either finally be satisfied or else will crumple into an exhausted heap and concede that the line I have is the best I can come up with after all. But I'll never leave it alone even years later.

This would actually be an interesting SF boards topic: How much effort, if any, do you spend compulsively rewriting your songs long after they're supposedly finished? I wrote a song for the fight "Brown Boxes" in about 2005 which I'm STILL trying to fix to this day every time I run across it. Actually, I wrote two songs for that fight, and I'm still trying to "fix" both of them. The upside of that little tic is that when a line absolutely, definitely meets my absurd standards, I feel awesome about it every time I hear it.

But to each his own. I do like the fact that your reviews go beyond the polite "Good job!"

Faint praise considering now again I feel like a dick which I told myself not to do before I came back to the boards.... I''' just keep telling myself "I'm the guy with the stupidly high standards, own it" and maybe someday I will be at peace with that.

[Æpplês&vØdkã]

For what it's worth, with all of this talk of lyricists and strict vs loose meter or worrying about rhyming: one of my favorite lyricists is Robert Smith of The Cure. On their early albums, especially Faith and Pornography, *many* of his lyrics completely eschew rhyme schemes and constant meter. Usually over an insistent baseline and a throbbing, simple tom heavy beat. (If that sounds like it describes a lot of Phlebia songs, well...Try Me fits that description quite well for about half the song)

But consider these lyrics, for their song "Cold"

Scarred, your back was turned
Curled like an embryo
Take another face
You will be kissed again

I was cold as I mouthed the words
And crawled across the mirror
I wait, await the next breath
Your name like ice into my heart

Rhythmically they're all over the place, and rhyme scheme-wise they don't rhyme at all. It's all mood, all intense imagery, all evocative as hell, but the way it's sung...the way many of their songs are sung...are essentially like melodic recitations that are super syncopated and all over the beat. Which is sort of the school of thought that I come from in my lyric writing.

And that's not an excuse for how shoehorned-in my use of the phrase "Try Me" is. I know it's crammed in there. But given my influences, any critique of "lyrics floating along all over the beat" sort of falls on deaf ears because for my it's as much of a style choice as anything.

[Jim of Seattle]

So my wife and I drove to Ikea last night to buy a glass cabinet ("Fabrikör"). It's sort of a drive (fluffy: Crown Hill to Kent on a Friday evening). She drove since she has the big car, so I got to passenge, heated seats, reclined. Pandora was playing pop/rock, both classic and contemporary, and I listened to lyrics since we've been having this hugger mugger here about lyrics.

And I decided clearly I'm wrong about adherence to meter. What I've been saying about sticking to syllabic structure just doesn't hold. To be sure, stresses on syllables are pretty universally respected, however, so I'm still not backing down on that. But extra syllables are tossed in and taken out all the time. So why did those songs pass muster and others don't? What makes a lyric stick out as wrong due to meter while other lyrics are given a pass?

First off, as I said, I don't think I heard one example the whole drive where a word was stressed on the wrong syllable, so I'm sticking to that being as close to an inviolable rule as can be. And there is another messier rule I'll call "cleanliness" that they mostly had, where the lyrics have a musicality all their own that compliments the actual notes, heard in things like judiciously repeated phrases, and words which delightfully mirror the tune creating a sense of inevitability. This could also be looked at as a longer-form version of syllabic stresses on words, sort of a syllabic stress on entire words within a phrase. And the lyrics were organized, meaning they didn't go off topic, like they either told a story or proved a point or maintained a vibe.

Maybe it's partly that the alternative melodies that arise due to more or fewer syllables are just as good as the "real" melody, so I don't really notice, and it provides the song with a looser feel at the same time.

Maybe it's partly because there isn't the aroma of preciousness around the lyrics which is liable to subject them to closer scrutiny.

Maybe it's partly that there are other good things about the lyrics to that song that forgive other aspects.

Anyway, while I maintain my beliefs that lyrics are really hard and should be worked and worked and not allowed to be just good enough, I take back the notion that strict meter is necessarily one of the attributes that has to always follow a strict rule.

My daughter is an artist and art teacher, and I got a Xmas present last year of art lessons from her, and I've learned an important lesson from her in drawing that applies here. What I wanted from these lessons was the ability to sketch a person or thing and have it actually look pretty good. I don't want to paint the Mona Lisa, but I'd love to be able to go "here's a dog" and go boop boop boop and come up with a pretty good dog. And what she's having me do is spend weeks on these detailed photo-realistic depictions of faces. After a few months I complained that I'm not interested in detailed perfect-o faces, I want to be able to whip out simple little sketches that look good. But she insisted that the best way get there is by first slaving over the precise detail of the faces over and over and over, and only that way will I have built up the skills to be able to whip out dog sketches. And I'm only getting to do faces. Why? She said because humans know faces, so I'll know instinctively when something, even the tiniest detail, seems wrong about it. (She even says I ought to only being doing faces of people I know, because I have an even more intimate awareness of what's right and wrong.) I complained that these detailed faces take too long, and she insisted that that's just how long these drawings take, but if I hold myself to that kind of rigor for a time, and not until then, eventually I will in fact be able to whip out decent dogs.

[Jim of Seattle]

...Robert Smith of The Cure. ...*many* of his lyrics completely eschew rhyme schemes and constant mete...consider these lyrics, for their song "Cold"...it's as much of a style choice as anything.

Yeah, if a lyric is awesome in Aspect A, we'll tend to forgive Aspects B, C and D about it. But that If is a tall order of course.

Btw I think your Phlebia songs, the two I've heard so far, are fairly bursting with unmet potential.

[crumpart]

I know this started out as an argument, but I'm actually loving that there's an in depth discussion about lyrics and meter and rhythm happening here. I feel like they often take second rung to music and production in the reviews, which is sometimes frustrating as I love writing them (except for the verses in my first entry, which were like pulling teeth) and it's probably what I'm best at in the whole process.

One of my favourite songs about songwriting, Falling Aeroplanes by Darren Hanlon, used to drive me batty because he shifts around some of the sentence structure (making it grammatically incorrect) so that it works for the rhyme scheme and tempo. I've now realised that those weird shifts in sentence structure that used to bother me now actually make it more enjoyable.



I do prefer poetry that adheres to strict structures over free verse, but with the songs I tend to take a looser approach to rhyme schemes, slant rhymes and so on, because I think it's more important that they play well with the tempo and emotional centre of the song as a whole. I do come up with my own rules in each song though. For instance, in Try Me, the chorus got four repeats of Try Me, but the repeating phrases in the verses got three to differentiate them from the chorus. I also used the second repeating phrase from each verse as the start of the next verse, so it goes Tell Me, Show You > Show Me, Take You > Take Me, at which point it's the last verse, so I deliberately changed the structure of the verse to indicate the end of the song (well, technically it goes Take Me, Play You, but I didn't repeat the Play You like I did with the others).

In my Right Town, Wrong Address entry, I had a line at the end of the second verse that contains as many syllables as I could possibly jam in. I tried a version sticking strictly to the original tempo/syllable count, and while it worked technically, it was way off the mark emotionally and just had no punch, so I threw all my extra words back in and paid a little extra attention to my breathing to get the delivery right. So what I think I'm saying is I'm one foot in the land of Bend All The Rules, and the other foot in Don't Settle For The First Thing You Write Because It Could Be Better.

[crumpart]

My daughter is an artist and art teacher, and I got a Xmas present last year of art lessons from her, and I've learned an important lesson from her in drawing that applies here. What I wanted from these lessons was the ability to sketch a person or thing and have it actually look pretty good. I don't want to paint the Mona Lisa, but I'd love to be able to go "here's a dog" and go boop boop boop and come up with a pretty good dog. And what she's having me do is spend weeks on these detailed photo-realistic depictions of faces. After a few months I complained that I'm not interested in detailed perfect-o faces, I want to be able to whip out simple little sketches that look good. But she insisted that the best way get there is by first slaving over the precise detail of the faces over and over and over, and only that way will I have built up the skills to be able to whip out dog sketches. And I'm only getting to do faces. Why? She said because humans know faces, so I'll know instinctively when something, even the tiniest detail, seems wrong about it. (She even says I ought to only being doing faces of people I know, because I have an even more intimate awareness of what's right and wrong.) I complained that these detailed faces take too long, and she insisted that that's just how long these drawings take, but if I hold myself to that kind of rigor for a time, and not until then, eventually I will in fact be able to whip out decent dogs.

Now, here's something that I know a thing or two about for real.

With your faces, I assume you're laying out a map of where everything goes before you start to add in any detail? Like a song, you need the basic structure there before you get too involved with all those little details. What I'd say is to look for all the big shapes, see how they relate to and interact with each other, and that's your structure. My other tip would be to photograph or scan your drawings then flip them so that they're mirrored. If they look super weird when you do that, something is wrong with the structure, because the picture should look balanced both ways. If they look good when you flip them, you've got the drawing right. Also, draw dogs when your daughter is not looking, because nobody should be denied the joy of drawing dogs. (Also, drawing dogs from life is one of the best things you can do, as it forces you to look, make decisions and draw quickly. The rule of life is that even if a dog has been lying still for hours, the minute you start to draw them they WILL move.)