“Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind.”
- Gioacchino Rossini
Friday is lyric celebration time.
Saying what you want to say the way you want it said is hard. That's especially true in lyric writing because you have so little time to say it. How do you say a lot with a little? How do you distill a big idea down to a few words? As Bob Seger sings in Against the Wind, “What to leave in, what to leave out." The good songwriters know how to do it.
There's one exercise some use to try and get an idea wrestled down to its core, it's called the “Six Word Story.” It's taking the big idea and explaining it in a half a dozen words. That's a challenge. The most famous example is attributed to Ernest Hemingway:
“For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”
Try it sometime.
Here are some other folks condensing ideas. Send your good examples.
Fust/Spangled: Relative new comers, Fust, joins a long list of Americana and Roots Rockers out of North Carolina. Just to name of few: Avett Brothers, Whiskeytown, Ryan Adams, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Mandolin Orange, Tift Merritt, and Charlie Daniels.
They tore down the hospital/Out on Route 11
I'm not sure what happened/Seems like repossession
And I'm not one to try to get/All the way to heaven
But now I can't even visit/The last place it was relevant
So give my love to Amy/Give my love to Kevin
They tore down the hospital
And I'm left floating in room 305
I'm floating forever, 305
Josiah and the Bonnevilles/One Day at a Time: Josiah Leming is from Morristown, Tennessee. Can anyone explain to me why nobody has ever heard of him and yet every other person seems to know who (fill in your marginal talent here) __________________ is?
I'm on my way back
Too many late nights I have drowned
I made you take that
Can't count the ways I let you down
And I left those scars when I took us far
From a place of peace and health
I'm on my way back
Puttin' that bottle back on the shelf
Peter Case/The End: Peter Case has had a long and storied career, both in bands and solo work. Gen-Xers might recognize him from his work in The Plimsouls in the 1980s (A Million Miles Away). They made a compilation album of his songs covered by various artists. It called A Case for Case: A Tribute to the Songs of Peter Case. When your contemporaries honor you like that, you've left your mark.
Everybody's screamin' just to get the last word
Difference is what you said and what I heard
Why the hearts break instead of bend
You gotta tell me straight
Is this really the end?