Color My Word..Painting a Lyric for the Listener
/Sorry about the bad “Chicago” pun in the title, I have no excuse.
I’m for sure not the first writer to pass this bit of wisdom down but I find it comes up so often in my coaching and critiquing that it’s worth saying again. Your job as a lyricist is to show not tell. If you just write the facts I’ll get bored but paint me a picture and now I’m interested. How are you going to make me, the listener, see what you see and feel what you feel?
A great way to start is by talking an idea out before you start to write it. Again, I didn’t make this one up but it works for me. Record yourself talking about the inspiration. What’s the idea/story about? One reason this is so helpful for a lyricist is that we all tend to disconnect a bit from images in our brain when we put pen to paper. To come up with a song idea it starts in your imagination with no rhyme scheme or craft, just images. You want to get these images, complete with color and detail on the page. Just talk it out. You can come back later and compare, see if you’ve really said what you wanted to say.
The beauty of this is it’s your story, your images and if you can get these out you can always apply the craft later. If you start by worrying about rhyme scheme and meter you’re bound to lose the good stuff and it will sound “stiff”. My buddy Kye Fleming used to talk about some lyrics feeling like “reporting”. It never fails that if I’m working with a writer, and their lyric feels like “just the facts”, I can ask them to close their eyes and just tell me what the song is about and 2 or 3 keeper lines will come out.
I came across this article in American Songwriter by Bill Renfrew and it does a great job of illustrating the point using a Brad Paisley song.
While I was deciding how to talk about some of these things in a workshop I have next weekend, I took a break to watch some episodes of Elvis Costello’s’ “Spectacle”. Must see TV for artists and songwriters! The first one I watched was with James Taylor and he played “Sweet Baby James”. Don’t know if there’s a better example of a writer painting a picture , check out the “Now the first of December “ verse and I’ll leave you with this.
Well, there is a young cowboy he lives on the range
His horse and his cattle are his only companions
He works in the saddle and he sleeps in the canyons
Just waiting for Summer, his pastures to change
And as the moon rises he sits by his fire
Thinking about women and glasses of beer
And closing his eyes as the doggies retire
He sings out a song which is soft but it’s clear
As if maybe someone could hear
(Chorus)
Goodnight you moonlight ladies
Rockabye sweet baby James
Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose
Won’t you let me go down in my dreams
And rockabye sweet baby James
Now the first of December was covered with snow
And so was the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston
Though the Berkshires seemed dream-like on account of that frosting
With ten miles behind me and ten thousand more to go
There’s a song that they sing when they take to the highway
A song that they sing when they take to the sea
A song that they sing of their home in the sky
Maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep
But singing works just fine for me
- Chorus -
So, Goodnight you moonlight ladies
Rockabye sweet baby James
Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose
Won’t you let me go down in my dreams
And rockabye sweet baby James
James Taylor
