Marcus Cavanaugh

Lyrics for Political Purposes

Jeffrey Lewis, from the NYT:

Writing a good political song — without coming across as sanctimonious, naïve or worse — is a particularly tricky thing to pull off, but I knew I had to come up with something.

Lewis talks about how it can be difficult to write a good set of lyrics, especially for political topics. I hadn’t considered that before; I had assumed that words pour out of lyricists like water from a $10 kiddie pool.

It’s tough to write lyrics that deliver the message you want to convey, while still providing adequate room to breathe, let alone fitting it to an appealing melody. Words that rhyme well with surrounding text might not be the word that conveys your intent. That’s a tough balance, especially for controversial topics. Writers have it easy — they can use whatever words they want to convey their point without having to worry about how those words will sound when fitted with a melody.

It can also be hard to write about topics you aren’t familiar with:

In general I’ve found that writing political songs can feel like losing my home-turf advantage if the topic is not a part of my own life experience — what song could I write about a miners’ strike that would sound as good as a song an actual miner would write?

It takes a lot of thought and context to write lyrics that are worthwhile. Music can compensate somewhat for poor lyrics, sure. But actually creating lyrics that fit well to music, while also conveying the writer’s intent, is much more difficult.

Posted 11 November 2008 in Music & Politics

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