Good old Word mag. Thanks to a certain splendid board member for sorting me out with three free copies. At last I'll cancel my utterly tedious Q subscription and get something for grown-ups instead. And if you subscribe now, you get Dylan's Chronicles free, which I want badly.
This month's ed contains the double delight of Tom Waits on the front and a long article, and another article with many songwriters on favourite lyrics and how they write theirs, including, but of course, EC. Interesting. It's quite long, so I won't volunteer to retype it, but do recommend it. EC gets lots of comments elsewhere, too. Fountains of Wayne's Chris Collingwood praises EC (best opening line 'History repeats the old conceits') and Ron Sexsmith, and EC praises the RS song title Clown in Broad Daylight. Ec's best opening line is 'Is there anybody going to listen to my story/All about a girl who came to stay?'
Great stuff.
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/
Elvis in word on lyric writing
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Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
Elvis in word on lyric writing
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
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laughingcrow
- Posts: 2476
- Joined: Tue Jul 29, 2003 8:35 am
EC loves clowns, doesn't he?
I've cited my fandom for Ron elsewhere on the board, but I do also love the Fountains of Wayne. Oh yes. Anyone..?
Otis, I'm surprised you still bother with Q, it's been appaling for about 5 years although I bought it religiously every month until the naked Courtney Love on the front of issue 200. Word magazine is great, my favourite of the Mojo/Uncut/Word trinity...
DrJ
I've cited my fandom for Ron elsewhere on the board, but I do also love the Fountains of Wayne. Oh yes. Anyone..?
Otis, I'm surprised you still bother with Q, it's been appaling for about 5 years although I bought it religiously every month until the naked Courtney Love on the front of issue 200. Word magazine is great, my favourite of the Mojo/Uncut/Word trinity...
DrJ
Tlentifini Maarhaysu
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laughingcrow
- Posts: 2476
- Joined: Tue Jul 29, 2003 8:35 am
"Revenge And Guilt A Speciality" - Elvis Costello
How do you go about writing lyrics?
I write passing thoughts, overheard conversations, discovered quotations, advertising signs, mumbled threats and words of kindness and endearment on scraps of paper. Sometimes I mutter them into dictaphones or record them onto my answer-machine when there is not an eyebrow pencil to hand in order to commit them to the page. Only very occasionally do I actually write directly into one of the numerous beautifully bound notebooks that I have purchased for the task. These usually contain lists of probable titles or 'long-form' descriptions of possible songs that some might call short stories. In the end they are filled with the various drafts of songs in progress.
When I begin to write, I sometimes like to transfer fragments - collected weeks, months or even years apart - on to a page in an A2 sketch pad (very large, very white paper). Connections can then be established and the page quickly resembles a mad equation of fluorescent pink arrows connecting one stanza to another, circled in lime green highlighter.
Eventually, some sense and rythm emerges and they are married to music. Sometimes it's then better to remove dull, literal sense once the meaning is clear to oneself. It is this space that the listener's imagination may choose to reside or invent.
It is easier to cheat the rhythmic structure of the musical material when one is composing alone. Many of my early songs have irregular structure for this reason. A computer is only of use to me to type a final legible draft. I have a writer friend who only writes on one model of typewriter, because the quirks of the mechanism and the appearances of typeface are reassuring. I find that, despite the variety of fonts available, the ordered appearance of the computer screen kills the rhythm of the written word. Sometimes the page needs to be tiny and crumpled. Sometimes it needs to be vast and pristine.
Some small tips:-
1) Always get up in the night to write down that line that comes to you just before sleep. You won't remember it in the morning.
2) Practice writing legibly in the dark.
3) Make sure that scrap of paper by your bedside is not a valuable cheque or priceless antique manuscript or something that you will not want to deface. It will also make your nocturnal script hard to decipher.
4)Some of the best songs arrive in the imagination, complete in words and music.
5)A song that you heard in your dreams just before you awoke is nearly always impossible to recall. Anyway, it was probably The Teddy Bear's Picnic played backwards.
Give us an example of an immortal lyric.
I misread the question as 'immoral lyric', of which I can think of many. I believe that very little is 'immortal' but much that is modest is impressive.
Lucinda Williams adds one attribute of the Lonely Girls per verse in a lyric with the almost impossible economy of Hank Williams - 'heavy blankets that fall upon them; sweet sad songs sung by them; pretty hairdos that they wear; sparkly rhinestones that shine upon them' - until she places herself among them with the resigned line, 'I oughta know about lonely girls'. Simple and perfect.
Mostly, I'm attracted to denser lyrics with passing novelistic description - Joni Mitchell's 'magnolias hopeful in her auburn hair' and 'dressed in stolen clothes she stands cast-iron and frail with her impossibly gentle hand and blood red fingernails' from Shades of Scarlet Conquering; Joe Strummer's 'the all-night drug prowling wolf who looks so sick in the sun' from White Man in Hammersmith Palais; the poignancy in the mere title of Ron Sexsmith's Clown In Broad Daylight; and Chris Difford's aside 'the cab took us back home through the night I'd noticed / the neon club lights of adult films and Trini Lopez from Picadilly'.
One of the most enduring moments is an absence, It is in Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan's Hold On. Having perfectly pictured a girl with 'charcoal eyes and Monroe hips' they conclude the portrait of an affair: 'By a 99 cents store, she closed her eyes and started swaying / But it is so hard to dance that way when it's cold and there's no music'. Your ear anticipates 'no music playing' but it doesn't arrive and there is just a measure of accompaniment. This is very beautiful. Then the song pays off: 'Any your old hometown's so far away / But inside your head there's a record that's playing...hold on'.
Best opening line?
'Is there anybody going to listen to my story / All about the girl who came to stay?' from the Beatles' Girl. Many folk songs start this way but few pay off with such erotic promise, although that is probably a lot to do with the way John Lennon sings this opening.
Alternatively there's 'In the time of my confession / In the hour of my deepest need' from Bob Dylan's Every Grain Of Sand. It has a gravity that the song entirely justifies.
Are there any particular emotions that are easier to write about - like revenge or guilt?
Don't you know that I only write about revenge and guilt?!! There are probably five subjects in all human song - I want someone, I lost someone, I believe in something, someone died, and a Dukla Prague Away Kit.
On the whole, sad is easier than cruel, as both cruel and happy are close to vain and foolish. They require qualification or totally unbridled joy (or relish in the case of cruel) as in 'You ain't livin' until you're lovin'. There is just more sadness in the world. Angry sad songs, sometimes mistakenly called 'political', don't often change ugly minds, but they make those in sympathy with them feel less lonely. 'Sad' is not necessarily bad or indulgent. It is why we sing in church and why John Dowland and Skip James had the blues.
Reverie is difficult to achieve without being cute. It might have been easier in the days of romantic convention. It is hard to imagine anyone writing a lyric as contrived and yet as utterly perfect as Lorenz Hart's Dancing On The Ceiling. The singer imagines his lover in the apartment overhead and remarks 'I try to hide in vain underneath my counterpane / But there's my love up there above'. It's reminiscent of a 30's movie dream sequence. I don't think anyone would put the word 'counterpane' into a song today, although I was quite happy to include one mention of 'bakelite' and two references to 'shellac' in my songs.
Any golden rules - like there's no rhyme for 'orange'?
I disagree. I think 'revenge' can be made to rhyme with 'orange', though I accept it is not a pure rhyme. They are also both dishes best eaten cold.
A few random observations:-
1) Assonance can be very liberating and tart.
2) Puns are better saved for bad greeting cards that you could buy your annoying uncle.
3) Could rap exist without the simile?
4) There is music in words and meaning is music. This is probably why so many show singers over emote. They do not seem to trust the music because they are actors at heart and trust in words.
5) Maybe they are all just dreadful hams.
There are certain words that clang and reverberate in the middle of a line. Sex is wonderful to write about, allude to - and enjoy at every possible occasion - but the word itself goes off like a bomb in a line, whereas the word 'taboo' is delightful. See Sex Bomb if you don't believe me.
also....
David Hepworth's Ten Records You Can Read...
Elvis Costello: The Very Best Of -
He's furiously prolific, which sometimes has made his work difficult to love, but he's probably the toughest attack-mode songwriter pop has ever seen. Tramp the Dirt Down, Radio Radio, IDWTGT Chelsea: these are songs that drop their targets unerringly and leave them down. His flair for puns sometimes seems like a medical condition ("the high heel he used to be has been ground down" etc) but nobody does fear and loathing better. "We could be in Palestine, overrun by the Chinese line, with the boys from the Mersey and the Thames and the Tyne".
and also...
Aimee Mann's ipod on random...
'And In Every Home' by Elvis Costello (from Imperial Bedroom, 1982)
Imperial Bedroom's one of the fancier ones, isn't it? Every song on the album has such great production, with Beatles-y flourishes, very ornate and dense. I loved it from the minute I heard it. I was also a fan of Elvis' from pretty much out of the box, though the first album passed us by in the States. This is definitely my favourite period of his.
How do you go about writing lyrics?
I write passing thoughts, overheard conversations, discovered quotations, advertising signs, mumbled threats and words of kindness and endearment on scraps of paper. Sometimes I mutter them into dictaphones or record them onto my answer-machine when there is not an eyebrow pencil to hand in order to commit them to the page. Only very occasionally do I actually write directly into one of the numerous beautifully bound notebooks that I have purchased for the task. These usually contain lists of probable titles or 'long-form' descriptions of possible songs that some might call short stories. In the end they are filled with the various drafts of songs in progress.
When I begin to write, I sometimes like to transfer fragments - collected weeks, months or even years apart - on to a page in an A2 sketch pad (very large, very white paper). Connections can then be established and the page quickly resembles a mad equation of fluorescent pink arrows connecting one stanza to another, circled in lime green highlighter.
Eventually, some sense and rythm emerges and they are married to music. Sometimes it's then better to remove dull, literal sense once the meaning is clear to oneself. It is this space that the listener's imagination may choose to reside or invent.
It is easier to cheat the rhythmic structure of the musical material when one is composing alone. Many of my early songs have irregular structure for this reason. A computer is only of use to me to type a final legible draft. I have a writer friend who only writes on one model of typewriter, because the quirks of the mechanism and the appearances of typeface are reassuring. I find that, despite the variety of fonts available, the ordered appearance of the computer screen kills the rhythm of the written word. Sometimes the page needs to be tiny and crumpled. Sometimes it needs to be vast and pristine.
Some small tips:-
1) Always get up in the night to write down that line that comes to you just before sleep. You won't remember it in the morning.
2) Practice writing legibly in the dark.
3) Make sure that scrap of paper by your bedside is not a valuable cheque or priceless antique manuscript or something that you will not want to deface. It will also make your nocturnal script hard to decipher.
4)Some of the best songs arrive in the imagination, complete in words and music.
5)A song that you heard in your dreams just before you awoke is nearly always impossible to recall. Anyway, it was probably The Teddy Bear's Picnic played backwards.
Give us an example of an immortal lyric.
I misread the question as 'immoral lyric', of which I can think of many. I believe that very little is 'immortal' but much that is modest is impressive.
Lucinda Williams adds one attribute of the Lonely Girls per verse in a lyric with the almost impossible economy of Hank Williams - 'heavy blankets that fall upon them; sweet sad songs sung by them; pretty hairdos that they wear; sparkly rhinestones that shine upon them' - until she places herself among them with the resigned line, 'I oughta know about lonely girls'. Simple and perfect.
Mostly, I'm attracted to denser lyrics with passing novelistic description - Joni Mitchell's 'magnolias hopeful in her auburn hair' and 'dressed in stolen clothes she stands cast-iron and frail with her impossibly gentle hand and blood red fingernails' from Shades of Scarlet Conquering; Joe Strummer's 'the all-night drug prowling wolf who looks so sick in the sun' from White Man in Hammersmith Palais; the poignancy in the mere title of Ron Sexsmith's Clown In Broad Daylight; and Chris Difford's aside 'the cab took us back home through the night I'd noticed / the neon club lights of adult films and Trini Lopez from Picadilly'.
One of the most enduring moments is an absence, It is in Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan's Hold On. Having perfectly pictured a girl with 'charcoal eyes and Monroe hips' they conclude the portrait of an affair: 'By a 99 cents store, she closed her eyes and started swaying / But it is so hard to dance that way when it's cold and there's no music'. Your ear anticipates 'no music playing' but it doesn't arrive and there is just a measure of accompaniment. This is very beautiful. Then the song pays off: 'Any your old hometown's so far away / But inside your head there's a record that's playing...hold on'.
Best opening line?
'Is there anybody going to listen to my story / All about the girl who came to stay?' from the Beatles' Girl. Many folk songs start this way but few pay off with such erotic promise, although that is probably a lot to do with the way John Lennon sings this opening.
Alternatively there's 'In the time of my confession / In the hour of my deepest need' from Bob Dylan's Every Grain Of Sand. It has a gravity that the song entirely justifies.
Are there any particular emotions that are easier to write about - like revenge or guilt?
Don't you know that I only write about revenge and guilt?!! There are probably five subjects in all human song - I want someone, I lost someone, I believe in something, someone died, and a Dukla Prague Away Kit.
On the whole, sad is easier than cruel, as both cruel and happy are close to vain and foolish. They require qualification or totally unbridled joy (or relish in the case of cruel) as in 'You ain't livin' until you're lovin'. There is just more sadness in the world. Angry sad songs, sometimes mistakenly called 'political', don't often change ugly minds, but they make those in sympathy with them feel less lonely. 'Sad' is not necessarily bad or indulgent. It is why we sing in church and why John Dowland and Skip James had the blues.
Reverie is difficult to achieve without being cute. It might have been easier in the days of romantic convention. It is hard to imagine anyone writing a lyric as contrived and yet as utterly perfect as Lorenz Hart's Dancing On The Ceiling. The singer imagines his lover in the apartment overhead and remarks 'I try to hide in vain underneath my counterpane / But there's my love up there above'. It's reminiscent of a 30's movie dream sequence. I don't think anyone would put the word 'counterpane' into a song today, although I was quite happy to include one mention of 'bakelite' and two references to 'shellac' in my songs.
Any golden rules - like there's no rhyme for 'orange'?
I disagree. I think 'revenge' can be made to rhyme with 'orange', though I accept it is not a pure rhyme. They are also both dishes best eaten cold.
A few random observations:-
1) Assonance can be very liberating and tart.
2) Puns are better saved for bad greeting cards that you could buy your annoying uncle.
3) Could rap exist without the simile?
4) There is music in words and meaning is music. This is probably why so many show singers over emote. They do not seem to trust the music because they are actors at heart and trust in words.
5) Maybe they are all just dreadful hams.
There are certain words that clang and reverberate in the middle of a line. Sex is wonderful to write about, allude to - and enjoy at every possible occasion - but the word itself goes off like a bomb in a line, whereas the word 'taboo' is delightful. See Sex Bomb if you don't believe me.
also....
David Hepworth's Ten Records You Can Read...
Elvis Costello: The Very Best Of -
He's furiously prolific, which sometimes has made his work difficult to love, but he's probably the toughest attack-mode songwriter pop has ever seen. Tramp the Dirt Down, Radio Radio, IDWTGT Chelsea: these are songs that drop their targets unerringly and leave them down. His flair for puns sometimes seems like a medical condition ("the high heel he used to be has been ground down" etc) but nobody does fear and loathing better. "We could be in Palestine, overrun by the Chinese line, with the boys from the Mersey and the Thames and the Tyne".
and also...
Aimee Mann's ipod on random...
'And In Every Home' by Elvis Costello (from Imperial Bedroom, 1982)
Imperial Bedroom's one of the fancier ones, isn't it? Every song on the album has such great production, with Beatles-y flourishes, very ornate and dense. I loved it from the minute I heard it. I was also a fan of Elvis' from pretty much out of the box, though the first album passed us by in the States. This is definitely my favourite period of his.
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VonOfterdingen
- Posts: 462
- Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2004 3:28 pm
- Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
They are pretty good. Haven't got an album with them but it's the closest to mtv guitarpop that i like. That country sound "hung up on you" is great and so is "Go Hippie" and "Radiation Vibe" to name a fewDrJ wrote: I've cited my fandom for Ron elsewhere on the board, but I do also love the Fountains of Wayne. Oh yes. Anyone..? DrJ
I'm not buying my share of souvenirs
Dr. J and Von: I too like the Fountains of W. Great pop songs. I recommend all three albums. 30 songs or so, and only 2 or 3 that I skip. My only complaint, and it's a mild one that does not stop me from loving their stuff to death, is that there's a lack of empathy in the songwriting for the subjects they routinely skewer. A little cruel, but hey it's pop music so who cares. Shockingly, they have become really popular in the US, with Stacy's Mom becoming a big single with the kiddies (my 11 year old daughter and her pals were into it), and now their quarterback song is being used in the national Football cable station as an intro to their regular programming.
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laughingcrow
- Posts: 2476
- Joined: Tue Jul 29, 2003 8:35 am
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Jackson Monk
- Posts: 1919
- Joined: Fri Sep 19, 2003 4:33 pm
- Location: At the other end of the telescope
Many thanks for typing this all up, Crow, if only for the above advice!laughingcrow wrote:"Some small tips:-
1) Always get up in the night to write down that line that comes to you just before sleep. You won't remember it in the morning.
2) Practice writing legibly in the dark.
3) Make sure that scrap of paper by your bedside is not a valuable cheque or priceless antique manuscript or something that you will not want to deface. It will also make your nocturnal script hard to decipher.
4)Some of the best songs arrive in the imagination, complete in words and music.
5)A song that you heard in your dreams just before you awoke is nearly always impossible to recall.
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
I don't bother, I just never got round to cancelling the subscription I took out in the early 90s! Am doing so now. I find I flip through it, read a small amount of it, and then forget about it, whereas Word is full of stuff you want to read. My kids enjoy looking at Q, it's more suitable for their age group (11 andDrJ wrote:Otis, I'm surprised you still bother with Q, it's been appaling for about 5 years although I bought it religiously every month until the naked Courtney Love on the front of issue 200. Word magazine is great, my favourite of the Mojo/Uncut/Word trinity...
. Agree that Courtney Love was a nadir. They really should have known better.There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
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Boy With A Problem
- Posts: 2718
- Joined: Sat Jun 14, 2003 9:41 pm
- Location: Inside the Pocket of a Clown
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verbal gymnastics
- Posts: 13662
- Joined: Wed Jun 11, 2003 6:44 am
- Location: Magic lantern land
I just got this copy of word and it's excellent. There's a lot of Costello and Friends in it... even John Foyle has a letter printed on, surprisingly, the letters page...
VonOfterdingen: Buy the three FoW albums in order, they're all great, particularly the first two which are on Amazon US together for under $20.
DrJ
VonOfterdingen: Buy the three FoW albums in order, they're all great, particularly the first two which are on Amazon US together for under $20.
DrJ
Tlentifini Maarhaysu
Bernie Taupin in the same feature -
What’s the best lyric you’ve ever heard?
Elvis Costello’s Watching The Detectives has one of the most viciously satisfying lyrics that comes to mind. It’s cryptic but at the same time has enough of a visible storyline to make you relate to it. It has this hypnotic pulse that’s so venomous that the words literally jump out the groove and bite you in the ass -
‘You snatch a tune, you match a cigarette / She pulls the eyes out with a face like a magnet/ I don't know how much more of this I can take / She's filing her nails while they’re dragging the lake’.
Followed by the coup de grace: ‘Though it took a miracle to get you to stay / It only took my little finger to blow you away’. Elvis is constantly magnificent as a lyricist. There is nothing remotely pedestrian about what he has to say .There are so many examples of his work that to cite just a few is doing him a disservice but I’d have to throw in Pump It Up and Indoor Fireworks as prime examples of his genius. He’s interesting, he’s articulate and the melodies he writes wrap around the words perfectly.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By the way , here's the letter of mine they used -
Thanks for the very illuminating feature on The Pogues and some of the references in their songs. However I was somewhat disappointed that you didn’t explain the line “While Ray and Philomena sang of my elusive dreams " in A Pair Of Brown Eyes; are the great Ray Lynam and Philomena Begley not cool enough for WORD?
John Foyle
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... 2?v=glance
My Elusive Dreams
Philomena Begley & Ray Lynam
What’s the best lyric you’ve ever heard?
Elvis Costello’s Watching The Detectives has one of the most viciously satisfying lyrics that comes to mind. It’s cryptic but at the same time has enough of a visible storyline to make you relate to it. It has this hypnotic pulse that’s so venomous that the words literally jump out the groove and bite you in the ass -
‘You snatch a tune, you match a cigarette / She pulls the eyes out with a face like a magnet/ I don't know how much more of this I can take / She's filing her nails while they’re dragging the lake’.
Followed by the coup de grace: ‘Though it took a miracle to get you to stay / It only took my little finger to blow you away’. Elvis is constantly magnificent as a lyricist. There is nothing remotely pedestrian about what he has to say .There are so many examples of his work that to cite just a few is doing him a disservice but I’d have to throw in Pump It Up and Indoor Fireworks as prime examples of his genius. He’s interesting, he’s articulate and the melodies he writes wrap around the words perfectly.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By the way , here's the letter of mine they used -
Thanks for the very illuminating feature on The Pogues and some of the references in their songs. However I was somewhat disappointed that you didn’t explain the line “While Ray and Philomena sang of my elusive dreams " in A Pair Of Brown Eyes; are the great Ray Lynam and Philomena Begley not cool enough for WORD?
John Foyle
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... 2?v=glance
My Elusive Dreams
Philomena Begley & Ray Lynam
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Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
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crash8_durham
- Posts: 524
- Joined: Wed Feb 18, 2004 8:55 pm
- Location: VA
- Contact: