Words, Words, Words! I'm So Stuck with Words!

I enjoy writing lyrics. And as I'm rather old-fashioned, I contend that lyrics are called lyrics because they:

1. convey a story, a feeling, a condition or a desire in only a few minutes.
2. are pleasing to the ear and sometimes play with the ear.
3. demonstrate some thought, effort and craft behind them.
4. actually sound lyrical.
5. actually rhyme. Unless the circumstances of the song require that they deliberately don't.

Call me wild and radical, but nothing drives me crazier than when I hear "songs" that are merely unmetered sentences, bad poetry, or non-rhyme (trying to pass as rhyme) with some kind of rhythm track or monotonous "melody" underneath them.

But enough about rap.

[Insert cricket sounds]

Lyrics, while occasionally seeming to be ad-libbed by the singer, take a great amount of care to sound so spontaneous. They're crafted. Effort goes into them and, when successful, entertain the listener on a level the listener is unaware of.

Theater lyrics, unlike lyrics to popular music, are essentially heard only once by the listener, and cannot be frozen, rewound, nor repeated to be understood. They exist only once during the course of a show, and if too convoluted or forced become completely useless.

The audience member must be able to understand them without going through mental gymnastics. The audience member should also be able to "keep up" with the song so as not to be left behind.

And what about "sophisticated" lyrics? If they can serve the right purpose, they're great. One of my favorite polysyllabic lyrical phrases is Stephen Sondheim's "imperturbable perspicacity." Now that's how you use alliteration! (A repeating initial or internal consonant sound. Sportcasters do it ad nauseum, and doing it that poorly should be the only offense legally punishable by death) .

Dumbed-down lyrics can be very boring and overly verbose lyrics can be a turn-off. The balance lies between, and depends on the character and story at the time they're performed.

(I apologize for using "verbose", which is its own best definition.)

Without going into a complete dissertation (which I am not qualified to do), I believe good lyrics are the unsung heroes of musical theater -- though they actually are sung. Bad or flat lyrics can kill even the best of melodies. And great lyrics can elevate a lesser melody.

I've never heard a great melody with crappy lyrics that was a big hit. At least not to me.

Elements I frequently like to interject into my own lyrics are:

1. unexpected (and sometimes bizarre) rhymes. But true rhymes, damn it. "Fine" and "time" do not rhyme. Nor do "together" and "forever".
2. internal rhyme. When words within the same line (or within consecutive lines) rhyme.
3. extra words. I like to surprise those people who think they know where a lyric is going before it gets there. Gotcha, Smartypants!
4. making up words that almost seem like real words, just to make the rhyme. Ogden Nash was the master. And when done properly, people cannot help but laugh (or groan) for the right reasons. I once rhymed "Kiev" with "beli-ev".

I think some of the absolute finest American theatrical lyricists include: Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Oscar Hammerstein II, Ira Gershwin, Lorenz Hart, Alan Jay Lerner, Adolph Green & Betty Comden, David Zippel (City of Angels), Stephen Sondheim, Howard Ashman, Stephen Schwartz and a few dozen others.

I mourn the demise of clever lyrics. And I mean "clever" in the good sense of the word, not the condescending way in which it's been used in the last twenty-some years. Hearing some stuffy old rich woman saying, "Oh my, how clever" makes me want to puke! [Reference to a line from The Producers, and the two old women in the restaurant scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life].

And I get very bored by a current trend of simply putting what sounds like dialogue to droning, monotonous notes, and pumping it up with dramatic orchestrations. Style over substance is a weak approach, and rarely successful in my eyes -- and ears. Give me style with substance every time.

The songwriter father of Richard & Robert Sherman (Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, Winnie the Pooh, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, tons of rides at Disneyland, and dozens of other great popular scores) gave his sons some of the best advice I've ever heard. He told them when creating a song, keep in mind the three S's: Singable, Simple and Sincere.

In addition to the Sherman brothers another Sherman, Allan Sherman, was an early influence as well. Long before Weird Al Yankovic, Allan Sherman wrote parody lyrics to famous melodies and, along with social commentator/ composer/ lyricist Tom Lehrer ("Pollution", "National Brotherhood Week" and "The Vatican Rag"), demonstrated how pointedly sharp and funny lyrics can be.

There is no way I shall ever be confused with any of the really great lyricists (since The Poptimists is satiric in nature, familiarity-with-a-twist is more important than originality), but if I'm writing a funny song and it makes people laugh for the right reason, that's good enough for me.

If I can avoid rhyming a singular with a plural ("plate" and "mates"), I've succeeded on another level. (Again, that isn't rhyme.)

If I can match the scansion of the lyrics (how one would say them naturally) with the scansion of the melody (how each note is naturally accented or not), I'm a happy camper.

So I'm hoping my lyrics throughout The Poptimists will succeed during the split second the audience hears them. For unlike the songs in Oklahoma!, the songs in my score have not been heard 3,426 times. Or even once. So the audience has to understand them the moment they hear them for the first time.

That's a lot of pressure for a lyricist.

I may not succeed, and if I don't, I'm man enough ...

... to blame the friggin' composer.

Next: The Composer Strikes back