Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Wordplay

One of my favorite aspects of songwriting is wordplay.

I almost invariably try to find ways to twist words or come up with clever lines to basically make myself smile.

One of my favorite things to do in a song is a thing you often see in poetry - essentially using the same sounds in alternating lines, but varying the words.

A good example (from "We Really Just Don't Care"):
Nobody sings a little song just to sing
Nobody brings a little wrong just to sting

Or maybe this one (from "Without You With Me Tonight" - written with my brother Rob):
So I know that I'll spend this evening lonely
But I can wait 'cause you are my one and only
'Cause I really think you are the one for me
I would even look past infidelity
My evening just couldn't be right
Without you with me tonight

It's little things like this that make me feel like I'm accomplishing something as a lyricist - telling the story, but doing it in a tuneful and lyrically clever way - not just stringing things together in some sort of weird baroque stream-of-consciousness thing (a la Alanis Morissette - but she's not always like that).

The bottom line is, it doesn't work for every song, but I find it really fun to find new and interesting ways to make words go together and work together both rhythmically and sonically.

I'm sure if I wrote stories my prose would be quite flowery and precious.

More to come...
TMS

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