Why Musical Writers Should Watch Nashville

Mainly because it's better than 99% of the stuff that makes it onto the telly.

If that's not a good enough reason for musical writers, then they should at least watch it for the songs which are not only very well written but also dramatically interesting.

This is, of course, the American TV show Nashville currently airing on More4. It is unsurprisingly set in Nashville and centred around the country music industry. Now my knowledge of country music is about as extensive as The Man in Black's wardrobe. So I can't tell you if the show's depiction of either the music or the industry is particularly authentic but it certainly makes for a good drama. 'Tis all I know.

The series was created by Callie Khouri who said some interesting things in an interview for Salon. Here's the interesting bit for musical writers:

I’ve been really impressed with how much Juliette’s songs sound like Taylor Swift songs. Well, more than going, “Okay, we need a song that does this,” we find these great songs and go, “Oh my God this could be so perfect for so and so, and this would have to happen for her to write that song.” Because it’s just not that easy to get somebody to write a perfect song, that says everything you need it to say. Sometimes everyone will do their pass on the script and it will be, “It would be great if we could get a song that said something like this.” And I’m just like, “Yeah it would, but we’re not going to get that.”
So you have music way ahead of having scripts?We start looking for the music way ahead, yeah. Because we have to record it all. And we want to be the first one to get our crack at the great song, so we’re listening all the time.
Does that mean you hear the songs, and you start to imagine how they would work in the script before the script exists? Even though you haven’t written it yet, the songs must give you some sense of where the story is going to go.Yes, exactly. You hear the song and it just evokes something, and you just start kind of writing toward that.

The age-old question for songwriters is which comes first, music or lyrics. The conventional answer for musical theatre writers is the story. In other words the songs are written in response to the drama. What Ms. Khouri is saying is that, at least in part, they were writing drama in response to songs.

This isn't entirely new. This is essentially what all those jukebox musicals - Mamma Mia and We Will Rock You - have been doing for a while. But these shows write a story around an already established back catalogue of songs. The big difference with Nashville is that the songs are generally not well-known and, in some cases, first heard on the TV show itself.

This doesn't make Nashville a musical. I'm sure that many of the characters and plot lines were in pace long before the songs. But clearly, at times, the songs inspired the story. And it's undoubtedly a good story rather some hodge-podge of nonsense simply there to string a few tunes together.

So this offers a different approach for musical theatre writers. There's no reason why the songs shouldn't come first. Especially when they sound as good as this: