• From: BELGIUM
  • Registered: 2007-01-27
  • Posts: 3,403

Topic: Disaster question: songwriting lyrics versus music

Another question just popped up.
How do you write a song. I ask maybe this more specific: what is most important: the music or the lyrics, even knowing that they are both important.
Starting from nothing on a paper:
- will you have a different song if you start with LYRICS, and than music: I mean you write lyrics and you build  music around those lyrics?
- or you have a tune, and in that tune you put your lyrics?
It sounds crazy, but I amp convinced that you will have 2 DIFFERENT songs.
I listen, NOT COMPOSING now, first to the music, and a little bit later to the lyrics.
I waited a long time to ask this, because I was a little bit shy to ask this. It is something that is so difficult for me, because in my opinion, starting with just the lyrics and after this the music, will give a different result if you start with music.
WHO CAN HELP ME, DO YOU AGREE WITH THIS KIND OF STATEMENT, OR NOT. WHO HAS EXPERIENCE?
It is easier to put lyrics after you wrote a song, than writing a song when you wrote already the lyrics.
This is for me a DISASTER question.

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2 Reply by cytania (edited by cytania 2007-07-18 12:42:21)

  • From: Nottingham, UK
  • Registered: 2006-08-08
  • Posts: 690

Re: Disaster question: songwriting lyrics versus music

Hi Phil, for most musicians the both come together, however there are notable exceptions. Elton John for instance can generate music to anything, but on his own all you have is 'Song For A Guy', luckily he has Bernie Taupin who turns out great lyrics.

Sometimes a band have a riff or break hanging around waiting for a place to put it. Fleetwood Mac had the big bass and guitar part of 'The Chain' worked out a long time before it was grafted into a Lindsey Buckingham song. The insertion is rather obvious once you know but it's so good you can forgive them.

Musicians usually talk about having a phrase in their head or a chord/note sequence that nags away at them. It's when the two link fit together that a song usually forms.

'The sound of the city seems to disappear'