The Direction Of Songwriting

Every song has its own story. That is true both of the message the song is trying to convey, as well as how the song came to be. Sometimes, the story of how a song was composed is more interesting than the song itself. As anyone who has endeavored in a creative field knows, pulling an idea from thin air and molding it into something amazing is a magical experience. It can't quite be explained, or replicated, but we continue on in search of the next great idea, because we have hit upon one before.

Recently, I was watching a record producer break down the song "Comfortably Numb", which included playing the demo where David Gilmour sings nonsense syllables to form the melody before the lyrics were ever written. After that, he explained how every musician he had ever talked to writes songs that same way. I don't doubt him, but it does make me wonder why that is.

Speaking from personal experience, I operate in the inverse. I write words and melodies first, before worrying about what will be played underneath them. At least one other songwriter told me they do the same thing. So why does it seem the majority follow the other formula?

I have a couple of theories for why that may be. 1)Most musicians don't care about lyrics. 2)Many songwriters consider themselves musicians first.

Let's look at the second of those theories first. Especially in the rock and metal genres (which is what this producer mainly talks about), songs are largely written by people who are not just instrumentalists, but playing in genres where 'the riff' and their technique is a big selling point in the music. Rock guitarists, if they want to achieve heightened stature, need to play flashy solos and complicated riffs. Being labelled 'basic' is an insult in many circles, so it makes sense to me those people would be inclined to give all their focus to the music first and foremost. They want to make sure they shine through whatever form the song ultimately takes, so they can at the very least be able to say they were the best member of an otherwise lousy band.

There is a subset to this theory, wherein the divide of songwriting between members of a band can also play a factor. If one person writes the music, and the singer writes the lyrics and melodies, they would have to write together at all times to avoid one side of the equation being given preference. For a player in a band who doesn't write the lyrics and melodies to the songs, they will often work on their own, where the music gets the sole focus of their attention. Ego may kick in here, wherein they wouldn't want to be told by a singer how to structure their song. Ego is always a problem.

The other theory is the lyrics simply don't matter to many musicians, singers included. While some part of a song does need to be written last, saving the words, the very message of the song, to be the final piece of the puzzle is a tacit admission that listeners aren't going to be paying much attention. They very well might be right. With the amount of music I hear in a given year, and with how few of those experiences come with a lyric sheet to draw from, many songs do have the poetry get lost along the way.

The wrinkle mentioned in this way of working, mentioned by the producer, is that a melody is formed phonetically, and words are filled in to match the sounds. This is where I begin to struggle with this approach to writing songs. When you are putting words in place because of their vowel sounds, there are unnecessary limitations on how the lyrics can impart the meaning. That isn't to say you can't be successful doing it this way, but it puts the meaning behind even the sound of the words in terms of importance, which indicates to me a lack of concern for what is being said.

In an idea scenario, both sides of a song would be written together, so they can inform each other where the song should go. That isn't always possible, and it has been made clear which side draws the short straw most often. For musicians, the music is usually the most important thing, because that is what they spend all their time writing, recording, and playing night after night on tour. The irony is that, for many (if not most) listeners, the music is the least important part of the song. The casual music listener will never be able to tell you the chord progression of a song, or what scale was used in an arpeggio, but they will remember the vocal melody. They will go to karaoke bars and sing those songs over and over again, but only a handful of guitar riffs that have ever been written will get anything close to that level of engagement.

There is a difference in philosophy regarding what we consider a song to be. For most people, and the history of copyright lawsuits in court, a song is defined by the melody. You can take a vocal melody and sing it over a hundred different chord progressions, and most people will tell you it's the same song. You can take the same guitar part and sing a hundred different melodies to it, and most people will tell you it's a hundred different songs.

Tacitly, we all seem to understand what parts of a song are key to making them endure with the listeners. We don't seem pop or rock artists naming their songs something along the lines of 'C Major Mixolydian Blues At 150 bpm'. No, we give it a title. We know titles are important, that the words do matter in a song expressing what it needs to. So why do so many songwriters save them for last?

Even after thinking about it, that's hard to answer.