What do you do to connect the lyrics to the music or do you care?

[Visconti]

I have a recent issue of American Songwriter with The Black Keys on the cover and in the artice Dan Auerbach the guitarist and singer in the Keys said the producer baned Danger Mouse told Dan they needed to get back together and work to refine the lyrics for some of the new songs to make them fit the music better.

 

Interesting right?

 

What do you do to connect the lyrics to the music or do you care?

 

Here's a link.

[Cliftonb]

Speaking in terms of sonic, textural, and emotional dynamics, one of the only ways I've found to have the vocals and composition to work together and evolve organically is to half compose and half improv the composition and vocals at the same time. This approach requires me to put away any pre-conceived ideas I might have about the direction of the music and to just "roll with it" when the music goes in a direction that I wouldn't have expected. The progression of the stuff I write (hopefully) feels organic and diverse because I myself quite honestly didn't have any idea how the song was going to pan out during its creation. I vowed never to have any of my music sound like the generic lyrics and singing over the same tired chord changes that I heard so often over the years.

 

I hear the progressive and organic marriage of vocals and music done all the time with art songs like those of Charles Ives and Ned Rorem, but haven't heard it done very much in pop music. Kate Bush could probably do it in her sleep. David Sylvian, Paddy McAloon, Paolo Conte, Bjork, Togawa Jun, St. Vincent, and Sufjan Stevens can all pull it off without a hitch. I guess it requires an artist to be REALLY good at pure music composition and textural design as well as lyric writing. And most singer songwriters are only especially good at lyrics.

[Lee Knight]

 

I have a recent issue of American Songwriter with The Black Keys on the cover and in the artice Dan Auerbach the guitarist and singer in the Keys said the producer baned Danger Mouse told Dan they needed to get back together and work to refine the lyrics for some of the new songs to make them fit the music better. Interesting right? What do you do to connect the lyrics to the music or do you care? Here's a link.

 

 

In the case of The Black Keys, as much as I LOVE... El Camino, I think their producer is right. There is a disconnect between some of the lyrics still, and its music. Lonely Boy begins:

 

Well I

[blue2blue]

I play what I feel. As a consequence, I often perform a given song in very different ways, depending on how I'm feeling. Some songs don't seem to vary that much but others can sound radically different from one playing to the next.