The inspiration for a song usually stems from a hook line: some combination of catchy words and notes that randomly occur to me. It’s usually a pointer to some sentiment out of which a simple narrative emerges. This hook is unlikely to change much during the production process, but that which is built around it to construct a well-formed song goes through a serious battering to get it into shape. As an example of selection pressure, any line that is admitted into the lyrics must conform to the meter of the song, the narrative of the song, and be grammatical, or at least make sense.
There are other pressures, but it is happy days when these three come together seemingly on their own; often they just won’t. Such lines tend to be of lesser priority than the hooks which the song fits around. When producing, priorities often shift to meddling with the rhythm or sound selection, and the minutiae of getting each line right (ie well-formed) can wait until later when I am happy with the core elements and can concentrate on laying down a guide vocal. In the meantime, some kind of filler will do – this filler just has to follow the rhythm and melody, preferably in line with the narrative, but really it is a guide for later tweaking. This can range from a kind of lorum ipum of vocal noises to nonsense lyrics, to something that almost works but is a bit clumsy.
Where the lyric is not well-formed, then it will seem out of place and dislodge the rest of the song. The criteria must be met with, but they are in an order of precedence: rhythm, melody, meaning, grammar, cleverness. Here “cleverness” just means avoiding cliches, simplicity of diction, profoundly meaningful, thoughtful wordplay, semantic duality, cultural referencing and so on – it isn’t critical but it gets bonus points in my book; its deeper artistry that makes a song and one of those things that, once you have listened to it a few times and got over the initial catchiness, you begin to think about what it actually means. It tends to be a feature of the album tracks that contribute to a classic.
The conundrum occurs when these pressures are at odds with each other. Usually, two of the major tests are passed, but the third just isn’t having it. Perhaps a line fits musically and progresses the narrative but is ungrammatical. Or again it is musically fine, and grammatically perfect, but it just doesn’t help the story. Worst is that of a supreme line, but it doesn’t fit musically. Where this happens, then something has to be adjusted, and that is the mind-bender that is way beyond the scope of this blog.
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