How Musicals Work III

Getting there.

On the "Lyrical Matters" chapter, Mr. Woolford has sections on the following:

Rhyme
Scansion
Sounds that Sing and Sounds that Don't
Character

All good stuff. Can't disagree with any of the sections, only the order in which they're placed. I think I'd go for:

Sounds that Sing and Sounds that Don't
Character
Scansion
Rhyme

Actually I'd probably shove Scansion in with the first category under the general heading of Singability or Singableness (neither of which are probably real words but, hey ho, that's why I don't have a book deal). And I'd put the Lyrical Idea ahead of everything (although Mr. Woolford calls this The Hook and deals with it in the previous chapter).

My point is that rhyme is nearly always the first consideration when most people think about lyrics and, really, it is the least important. It's the thing that usually comes up in first-night reviews. If a critic likes the lyrics they'll call them witty and quote a clever rhyme. If we think of the great lyricists, we tend to think first of the great rhymsters: Hart, Porter, Sondheim. But often it's the less flamboyantly rhyme-y ones that prove to be more popular: Berlin, Hammerstein, Loesser.

I think that's because clever rhymes tend to stand out and stick in the memory (indeed that's one of the functions of rhyme, to make something memorable), whereas making a lyric singable and writing in character, if done well, are trickier things to appreciate. Clunky lyrics draw attention to their clunkiness; singable ones don't draw attention to their singability, they just sing well. Similarly a character lyric draws attention away from the author and towards the character singing, so the author's skill is less conspicuous.

Mr. Woolford peppers his excellent book with little exercises for potential musical writers. I'd add this one: write a song without any end-of-line rhymes. I think this could be a useful way to force writers to think about their lyrical ideas, singability and character before worrying about rhymes.

Sometimes
The rhymes
Should be
A non-priority