So in recent days I have studied some famous songs with a view to seeing how it’s done. In the process I have learned many things but they boil down to one thing, which is that the fundamentals that apply to the business of writing don’t apply to the infinitely more lucrative business of writing songs.
Fundamental one: repetition.
We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine.
It seems that every successful popular song has a chorus, and it is that chorus by which the song is known and for which it is loved. And the more repetitive and banal the chorus the more readily people sing along to it. I need to learn repetitive banality.
Fundamental two: logical sequence.
I want my song to be the sort of popular anthem that gets played at rugby matches. A player is injured. Play stops. On rush the medical staff. The crowd has nothing to watch. Time to pump out my song, instead of what they pump out now which is Sweet Caroline (oh oh oh). So I studied Sweet Caroline. It seems to tell a simple love story.
Now every writer tries to tell a story in both a chronological and a logical sequence. They want their meaning to be explicit and lucid. But that’s not how a master of songwriting goes about the task.
Where it began
I can’t begin to know when
But then I know it’s growing strong.
Was in the spring
And spring became the summer
Who’d have believed you’d come along?
Note the magnificent vagueness of "it" in the opening line. Note also how he tells us he has no idea when "it" happened, but then tells us it was spring. And it is only after spring becomes summer that "you" come along, with "you" presumably being Caroline whom the song is celebrating and who surely must have been there when "it" all began in the first line.
How does one learn such narrative unreason, such achronological storytelling?
Fundamental three: metaphor.
I want my song to be played at funerals. I want it to compete with Sinatra’s My Way. My Way is a song drenched in metaphor.
Every writer strives to find fresh metaphors that put a picture in the reader’s head to illustrate a point. But great songwriters use metaphor differently.
Yes there were times, I thought you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt,
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all, and I stood tall
And did it my way
See how the cliche of biting off more than he could chew leads to the remarkable notion of edible doubt, which the narrator simultaneously both eats up and spits out. He also somehow manages to face it, and all while standing tall.
It must take years to learn to write like that. Or genius.
Fundamental four: meaning.
I want to write a song that every aspiring young rock star learns to pick out on his guitar, a song that will be covered by dozens of artistes, a song that is recognised as an ageless masterpiece of the rock musician’s art. So I studied Stairway to Heaven.
Well now, writers work on the principle that words have meanings, and that it is the writer’s job to string them together in such a way as to transfer an idea from the writer’s head to the reader’s. More fool them.
There’s a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure
Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings,
In a tree by the brook, there’s a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven.
I fear I’ll never learn to write that well. I fear I shall never be rich.
- Joe Bennett is a Lyttelton writer.
