Thanks For The Melodies

In the course of a very interesting interview with Lord Andy in the Independent, Ed Seckerson makes this comment about His Lordship's tunes:

"It’s what I call the emotional memory of these melodies that give them such dramatic potency"

Hmm, "emotional memory". Interesting phrase.

It's often said that the best tunes are the most memorable ones, the ones you wind up humming involuntarily at the end of a show. There's a good reason for this. In essence melodies are memories. Unlike harmonies, melodies can only be heard one note at a time so to "hear" a complete melody is essentially to "remember" the order of a series of notes. That's why a good tune is a memorable one and vice versa.

But why the emotion? In the dramatic context Lord Andy tends to structure the story around the tunes. The tunes and their repetition give shape to the drama. In Phantom the relationship between Christine and the masked man is first expressed in the song "Angel of Music". At the melodramatic unmasking during the show's climax the same melody is heard again but because the relationship has changed and developed we hear it differently. As well as expressing the mood of the moment the restatment of the melody is also a reminder of how far Christine and the Phantom have travelled. It has "emotional memory".

It's a technique that lies somewhere between musicals and opera: more sophisticated than a simple Broadway reprise but still a long way from Wagnerian leitmotif. It's bold, upfront and fairly unsubtle but very, very effective. Lord Andy understands as well as anyone how melodies carry with them memories and emotion, even the memory of emotion. That can be a powerful tool for a theatre composer.

Makes Me Feel There Are Songs To Be Sung

One Man Global Content Provider Mark Steyn has another illuminating Song of the Week: "You Make Me Feel So Young" by Joef Myrow and Mack Gordon. You know the one:

"You Make Me Feel So Young
You make me feel 'so spring has sprung
And ev'ry time I see you grin
I'm such a happy in-
dividual"

Or at least I thought I knew it.

First off, I'd always loved that odd rhyme - "grin/in-dividual" - and the playful way each syllable of in-di-vi-du-al gets ac-cent-u-a-ted. But whoever knew that this rhyme is known as an apocopated rhyme (as in "apocope" meaning "the omission of the final sound of a word" according to my OED). I'll be listening out for those in the future.

Second off, take another look at that second line:

"You Make Me Feel So Young
You make me feel 'so spring has sprung"

That's "'so" meaning "as though". That's a nifty bit of English.

I must have heard this song scores of times but never really noticed that cunning little contraction before. Lyric-writing is often about economy. Due to the dictates of the music you only get a limited number of syllables to say what you need to say. Those linking words and phrases that help to make good flowing prose are often clumsy and cumbersome when it comes to lyrics. Contractions, abbreviations and slang are a lyricist's best friends and, when none are available, the best lyricists simply make them up - 'so they'd always existed.

Black Goes With Everything

Speaking of lyricists, reminded me of a review I wrote of James Inverne's biography of Don Black. Black has a phenomenal career and the photo album to prove it. Anyway here's the review:

Don Black is the Little Black Dress of lyricists: classy, smart and pretty much goes with anything. Reading about his life in James Inverne’s biography you get the impression that he’s classically understated too, which might explain why the only people he gets recognized by are the old dears who’ve seen him on Countdown. Whilst Don Black may not be as well-known as Lord Lloyd-Webber or Sir Tim, he has been just as successful. His name has appeared alongside some of the biggest in popular entertainment. John Barry and Quincy Jones were writing partners; Sinatra and Streisand sung his words; Michael Jackson was a family friend. Did I mention Carol Vorderman? Well, you get the idea.

Like many a great songwriter Don Black was born into an immigrant Jewish family, not on New York’s East Side but in London’s East End. His early experiences of the entertainment world involved going to see the latest Hollywood flicks and watching the variety acts at the Hackney Empire Music Hall. He started his career as a stand-up comic. The tag on his billing read, “Don Black, the Living Joke”. Unfortunately he was a flop and, as his brother quipped, tended to leave the stage to the sound of his own footsteps.

After that he worked his way up from the business end of things, eventually becoming Matt Monro’s agent. It was only at this point that Black really got going as a lyricist, supplying the words for some of Monro’s hits. He struck gold in Hollywood with title songs for movies like Diamonds are Forever and Born Free (for which he became the first British songwriter to win an Oscar). As Monro’s career went the way of the bottle, Black’s contInued to thrive. He turned to musical theatre and came up trumps again, providing lyrics to a range of shows, from the playful razzmatazz of Billy to the grandiose comic-tragedy of Sunset Boulevard.

James Inverne manages to fill out the biographical outline with some great showbiz stories. In fact at times he seems determined to name-drop the entire contents of Who’s Who on Black’s behalf. But all the famous names do underline Black’s remarkable ability to collaborate with all kinds of people. There aren’t many other lyricists who could have taken on an assignment like Bombay Dreams, working alongside the Bollywood composer A.R.Rahman. On paper, they make the oddest of odd couples: Black, the old pro with a Tin Pan Alley work ethic and Rahman, a deeply spiritual and devout Muslim. If things weren’t going well Rahman would walk out of a writing session to pray to Allah for inspiration. When Black got stuck, he’d nip down the local curry house and scan the menu (“I’ve already written ‘its my chapati and I’ll cry if I want to’”). But somehow the partnership worked and produced a highly original West End score.

If there is a criticism of this biography it’s that sometimes the backstage drama overshadows the drama in the lyrics. With so many great songs to choose from, there’s plenty to gain from a little analysis. Take Tell Me on a Sunday, which is one of Black’s best works. It’s full of those observational truths that say an awful lot without saying much at all. There’s the beautifully plaintive “Nothing Like It Ever Was”, where the heroine starts an affair with a married man:

Married man,
Always looking at your watch.
I wanted to
Spend more time than twelve ‘til two
Loving you.

You can immediately picture the scene: a furtive lunchtime meeting with one eye on the clock, the married man sneaking back to the office in time for the sake of keeping up appearances. It’s a whole story in an anecdote and a model in the art of compression. And, where most lyricists would struggle with anything other than a regular 4/4 beat, Black manages to rest his words effortlessly on an awkward 5/8 time signature.

It’s that kind of easy-going artiness, coupled with a very British sense of modesty, that’s kept Don Black at the top of the songwriting game for over four decades. This biography is a celebratory reminder that Black never really goes out of style.

Three Lyricists for the Price of One

The new title song from Love Never Dies has been revealed. Only it's not that new.

I first remember hearing this one from Lord Andy's 50th Birthday Bash sung by Kiri "The Kiwi" te Kanawa. Then part of it turned up in The Beautiful Game. Now it's back for Love Never Dies. Obviously Lord Andy is pretty keen on it and I don't blame him. It's a lovely broad melody, expansive and romantic but still accessible. This is very much his territory.

It also offers a rare opportuniy to see what three different lyricists did with the same 8 bars of melody. So in chronological order, first up is Don Black with "The Heart is Slow to Learn":

I never loved
As I have loved you
Why is love cruel? I wish I knew
Say what you will
It doesn't matter
Until I die there's only you

Then Ben Elton has a crack with "Our Kind of Love":

Our kind of love
Our kind of passion
Burns with a heat that's hard to bear
It's not a game
No fad or fashion
My kind of love's for those who dare

I must be strong
I must be bolder
Cling to my dream and never tire
Each love denied
Leaves people colder
New love rekindles every fire

I am in love
No-one can blame me
Such is my story and my fate
My kind of love
Will never shame me
My love is stronger than their hate

All kinds of love
Bring us together
Causing the broken hearts to mend
People must love
Now and forever
There's only one love in the end

And finally Glenn Slater, lyricist of Love Never Dies, puts in his t'pennies worth:

Love never dies
Love never falters
Once it has spoken love is yours
Love never fades
Love never alters
Hearts may get broken, love endures

Love never dies
Love will continue
Love keeps on beating when your gone
Love never dies
Once it is in you
Life may be fleeting, love lives on

Now these lyrics were written for different occassions. Black's were for a one-off performance (it's possible he was an early lyricist on the Phantom sequel but I don't really know). As such it's a solid professional job and has by far the best title. But it also has an understandably, given the lack of context, wishy-washy sentiment ("Why is love cruel? I wish I knew").

Elton's, on the other hand, have a more specific context. It's sung by a young Irish girl giddy in love with her new boyfriend and George Best's thighs. As such it's none too convincing. Much better is when it's reprised at the end of Beautiful Game and sung with an angry bitterness as all that youthful hope has slowly turned to dust.

Slater's lyrics are defiantly romantic which suit the feel of the music remarkably well. Of course, for this to be dramatically pertinent, as with Beautiful Game, it should be in a situation where love really has died. That way the defiance is intensified. It'll be interesting to see where the song is placed in the stage show.

In technical terms I would say that the double rhyme scheme (ABAB) in Elton's (passion/fashion) and Slater's (falters/alters) lyrics isn't really necessary. Yes, the tune suggests a similar scheme but the lyrical phrases are so short that an extra rhyme seems unecesssarily neat. Neatness is not what this melody is about. I'm with Black's lyric on this.

On the other hand the repetition is important. The first four notes of the tune with its dramatic ocatave drop forms a musical phrase. This is then repeated up a tone. So the lyric of the first phrase needs to express a thought and then repeat and intensify that thought with the second phrase. That's what Slater does beautifully in his first verse ("Love never dies/Love never falters") and then, when a new bit of tune comes in he changes the pattern ("Once it has spoken, love is yours"). The music and words are working in synch. Unfortunately he breaks the pattern in the second verse. The first and second lines use the repetition ("Love never dies/Love will continue") but then the third line, following the new musical phrase, should start with something new but instead makes another statement beginning with "Love" ("love keeps on beating when you're gone"). The pattern is broken again on the next two lines by producing one sentence over the two repeated musical phrases ("Love never dies/Once it is in you").

This kind of slow, expansive tune is tricky to fit words around. In fact all the lyrical examples have bits where the stresses of the words don't quite follow those of the music (as in "Peo-ple must love" with the "ple" getting the musical emphasis). On top of that the lyricist can't out-do the composer with broad brush emotion. "Until I die there's only you" is an emotional statement that seems overcooked, even slightly hysterical. Music generally conveys this kind of emotion more easily than lyrics.

The point is that lyric-writing is a different way of using words. On a technical level it's not about complex thought, grammar and sentence structure; it's about rhythm, sounds and syllables. That's what makes it a uniquely difficult task. Not only that, but the composer can get multiple verses and, in this case, multiple songs out of the same 8 bars of music. The lyricist has to find different words each time. It's definitely the fag end of the bargain.

It may be a thankless task but fortunately there are at least three brave souls willing to try. God bless 'em, every one.