I don’t shape trends, I’d say. I merely reflect them. I think the emphasis is on ‘them.’ I like variety in poetry. I love how it comes in so many guises. As rock lyric, as rap, as note on a fridge.
I have a lyric journal that I write in a lot. When I’m going to play, I just sit down and have my books with me and my notes and tapes and whatever I need to refer to. I just play and try different things. It’s a kind of discipline.
I tend to write at the piano, but usually the melody and lyrics come first. Like, I’ll be in the shower, and I’ll start singing, and the melody and the lyric will just come out. Then I’ll quickly try to finish the shower, try to remember it, record it on my phone and save it for the studio.
There are some songs where I’ll have had the music for 20 years and then finally the lyric will come through. That’s not common but it does happen. Then there are other songs that come really quickly.
This proves that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul.
I was half asleep lying there writing this lyric in my head at about 3:30 in the morning. I woke Steve up with this idea and then we went into the living room where there was a little upright piano and finished the song. I wonder where that piano is now?
Great music is just very clear. Sonically and lyrically, you understand the point of view, you understand the melodies, you understand the vibe, and you understand the lyric pretty damn quickly. To me, that doesn’t make it ‘less than’ – it makes it ‘more than.’
Sometimes I’ll be driving and a lyric will come into my head, and I will have to pull over and record it on my phone.
A banal poem is never more than a banal poem. A banal or trite lyric, however, can be – with the right vocal cords – brilliantly and shatteringly conveyed.
I’m not a pop song lyric writer. I can’t just focus on one simple meaning or even a double entendre.
I was an usher at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith. You had to watch whatever play they had on 40 times.
Everything that Traffic ever did, I’d give Steve a complete lyric, titled, written out with the verse, the bridge, the shape and rhyme and then Steve had to figure out how the meter of the words would fit musically.
In my bachelor days, I had a small upright piano in my kitchen. It cost £10 from eBay plus £70 delivery. It was because I’d seen an old photo of Tom Waits – with dirty dishes, empty bottles, a hot plate, a coffee machine and a piano strewn with lyric sheets – and fallen in love with it.
It must have been when I was 14 or 15 that I started tentatively writing songs and was able to convey an emotion and a lyric with what I wanted to say.
Sometimes I hold back from tweeting certain things. Sometimes you’re emotional, and you want to tweet a lyric or whatever it may be. I can’t do that because if I do, it’s, ‘Oh, this means this and that she must be going through this…’ It’s like, what the hell?
New lyric writers have become an asset for me. I gave Naseer Faraz a break in ‘Aetbaar’ and he was up for several awards.
You can’t tell the story of a 13-year-old boy who knows every lyric to ‘Phantom of the Opera’ without also referencing how much teasing he gets at school.
I usually start with a lyric or a melody and then build a song around that.
I sit down and draw from my lyric book. I sit down and start looking through it and see if there is anything that strikes me that I’ve written.
When the student has her voice under complete control, it is safe to take up the lyric repertoire of Mendelssohn, Old English Songs, etc. How simple and charming they are!
I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.
I don’t really care about audio quality. If people saw some of the ways that I record stuff, they’d see I don’t care in that respect. I obviously care about things sounding good, but I think quality exists through other things like emotionally connecting with a lyric or a feeling, or whatever.
I’m not a lyric writer to make statements. What I enjoy doing is making paintings with lyrics, creating colorful images. I think that’s more what entertainment and music should be.
You’d think, of course, it’s about the melody – that’s a given. But really, I’m no good at singing a song unless it has a good lyric.
In country music the lyric is important and the melodies get a little more complex all the time, and you hear marvelous new singers who are interested in writing and interpreting a lyric and in all form of popular music.
For me, whenever I choose a song to sing, it’s about the lyric first.
I just want to write a great lyric and write a great song, and everything else is icing on the cake.
With Fountains Of Wayne, I almost always start with lyrics – maybe not the entire lyric, but I almost always need a couplet or something, and then I work from there. With Ivy, it’s much more about the atmosphere and the vibe.
I am never without my lyric book. If anything inspirational happens, I have it there so nothing’s forgotten.
When I started writing songs for Temple of the Dog, I went to my room with my acoustic guitar, and I was happy staying in that mode. It was more chordal based and more lyric driven. I enjoyed not making riff-based songs built around a guitar idea.
You know, when I did ‘American Idol’ the three times, I tried to tell these kids you have to tell the story of the lyric.
For me, music always leads. Lyrics are only about how they sing. It is wonderful if they read well, too. In the very best scenario, sometimes a lyric will pop out with a melody, simultaneously. That’s a lovely thing, but you can’t rely on that.
I was the lead singer in a lot of the bands I was in. You have to be comfortable. You gotta get up there and sell the song. You have to get up there and sell the lyric. You gotta be able to feel it.
Poetry, first and foremost, is the lyric. It’s the music.
In our hands, even the straightest lyric sounded shady.
When you’re listening to club music, there’s no reward. The reward isn’t, ‘Oh, here’s the chorus, here’s the lyric that makes sense.’ You have to enjoy what it is. You have to enjoy that there’s no conclusion.
In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself.
Music is creation. In reggae the lyric, the music itself, arrangement, that vibe, such melody – everything within the music moves the people, understand?
When I’m writing a lyric, things can only get so serious before they start becoming humorous.
I get a different kind of lyric from someone else that might make me go in a different musical direction.
When Curtis Mayfield made ‘Super Fly,’ he used the lyric to make a statement.
I still get a little nervous before performing. You don’t want to forget a lyric; you don’t want to make a mistake. I still get butterflies. You can try to judge an audience, but you can only really judge things by the applause.
I don’t think I always look in people’s faces, like, as – I think especially when I’m doing my more intimate songs that are quite personal, I always feel it’s a bit accusing if I stare in someone’s face when I singing quite a personal lyric.
I think if you are writing an instrumental you are dealing with more of an aesthetic in a sense but a lyric is more of a putting yourself on the line and a much more expensive exercise.
A lot of people feel that the realm of poetry and the realm of the lyric is personal feeling and should rise above politics, which, in fact, good poetry has never done.
I had the lyric ‘Chip Don’t Go’ and a few words, and my wife came in and said that it sounded like a good song. I thought I’d finish writing it up and posting it to YouTube. I didn’t realize it was going to take off like it did.
