So, I write songs. Here’s how.
I have always written the music first. I’ll have an idea for the verse and chorus, sometimes the bridge, too. I’ll have a melody line in mind. At that point I will make sure I have it down on a microcassette (finest investment I ever made). I usually have 2 or 3 song ideas floating around at one time. Once I get it sort of concrete I’ll try not to play it until I’m ready to write the lyrics.
The lyrics always take the longest. I learned early on that if I started the lyrics, and then stopped halfway through thinking, well, there’s half a song, I’ll finish it up later, when I come back to it it’s gone and I can’t recapture it. So, I have to write the lyrics in one shot. Also, for some reason, I only write late at night. A friend made a joke recently that it’s like Philip K. Dick receiving transmissions from VALIS. I like that idea. Either way, it only works at night. So, if I’m going to write a song, it means I’m not going to bed until the morning. So, usually it requires a conscious decision to write a song that night. Which is not to say that’s always the case… sometimes I’m just messing around with a song idea and I start to scribble down a few lines and suddenly I’m halfway in and I realize I’m doomed because now I have to finish it, because it’s moved from “random ideas” to “unfinished song.”
It used to vary more, how I got the lyrics. But lately I find I seem to follow the same pattern. I get the title first. I think this may be one of the more atypical things about how I write. Sometimes I’ll just see a phrase, and think, that would be a great song title, I have to write that. Other times I know what it is I want to say, but I can’t move forward without a title to hang the idea on.
The newest song was like that. I had three ideas floating lately, one of them the three-chord song I mentioned before, a slow one on the baritone guitar, and the one I finally wrote last week. It had been claimed by an idea a little while ago, but I needed something to hang it on. I knew I wanted to write something political, which has always been difficult for me… I have listened to way too much overt political music, most of which ends up sounding preachy and condescending. Which has kept me from doing much of it myself, even though I tend to be pretty politically minded.
It seems stupid that I didn’t just do what I’ve done with most of my more personal songs, which is slap an obscure metaphor on it and let them figure it out. Doubly stupid since I tend to use political metaphors a lot for personal songs, it seems obvious that I could just so the opposite.
But sometimes the obvious escapes me.
And, everyone understands I feel pretentious as hell explaing all of this, right?
