Is Lyrics Grammatical Or Wot?

Not necessarily.

Very funnycolumn by Saptarshi Ray who has been getting folks to send in their pet grammatical hates in pop song lyrics. The list is long. My personal favourite is this comment from BrianC:

“’We don't need no education.’ Well... you've slightly undermined yourself there, haven't you?”

Now try and do the same for musical theatre songs and it seems to me to be a lot harder. There is, I think, a simple reason for this: musical theatre songs need to make sense.

If pop lyrics don’t need grammar it’s because there’s less need to ensure a clear expression of meaning. So this sort of Paul Simon thing would sound awful in a musical:

A man walks down the street
He says why am I soft in the middle now
Why am I soft in the middle
The rest of my life is so hard
I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
Bonedigger Bonedigger
Dogs in the moonlight
Far away my well-lit door
Mr. Beerbelly Beerbelly
Get these mutts away from me
You know I don't find this stuff amusing anymore

This is a wonderfully singable stream of consciousness, associations and wordplay. But it is also nonsense or, to put it more favourably, it’s meaning is allusive. 


That’s fine for Paul Simon but stick this in a musical and the audience would be scratching its collective head. There’s no way to express character, situation or drama in this kind of lyric. Musical lyrics need to mean something and that meaning needs to be clear. If grammar helps, then bring it on. Innit?

Making a Song and Dance of Australian Politics

An illuminating MusicalTalk discussion on the state of musicals down under between Nick "The Guv’nor" Hutson and two antipodeans, Luisa Lyons and Maryann Wright. Even more illumination from this excellent article.

During the discussion mention is made of the hit show Keating! the Musical based on the political career of the former Prime Minster, Paul Keating. This has played successfully all across Australia but raises the question: could this show work elsewhere?

Now I’m not normally a fan of exclamation mark musicals and, when it comes to Aussie politics, I’m as dumb as a galah. But I happened to catch this show a few years back in the beautiful city of Adelaide ("Go Crows") and had a heaps good time. So how could a politically-ignorant pom enjoy Keating! and could the show travel?

Well, much of it would. Really the aim is to be funny and, as always, funny songs need funny ideas. So re-staging Prime Minister’s Question Time as a rap contest is pretty funny in any language, even if you don’t know who John Hewson is or get all the references to General Services Tax:

Of course, this being Aussie politics, the punch lines are verbatim. Can’t imagine David Cameron dispatching that from the Dispatch Box.

There are more funnies from the rest of the show including that good ol’ standard: men dressing up as women (it’s an all-male cast). “Freaky” is a difficult song to describe but if you imagine William Haig in suspenders singing like a frustrated lush, you’ll get the drift. Even better is the romantic ballad “Heavens,Mr. Evans” about an affair between two members on the opposite sides of party politics: 


HE: 
My heart’s in peril, Cheryl
Loving you so much
SHE: 
Heavens, Mr. Evans
How I tingle at your touch
BOTH: 
We’re equally enamoured but differently aligned
HE: 
And also, aren’t you married?
SHE: 
Yes I am.
HE: 
As am I.
BOTH: 
Never mind!

As far as there is a political point to the show I’d say it was a more general one about political personalities. Arriving inbetween the instinctive populism of Bob Hawkes and the manufactured mateship of John Howard, Keating is presented as vain, elitist, mercurial and frankly downright un-Australian; the blip of an authentic radical to enliven the familiar political pulse. It’s a wonder he ever became Prime Minister. “Light on a Hill” has him mixing mockery with melancholy against a thoughtless kind of reactionism:

"Bring us back our comfy bloody country
Take us back to simple days of yore
Nothing alien or scary
La-de-da or airy fairy
Just put it back the way it was before"

So there’s a lot to love in this show and plenty that would translate:

1. The songs are very well crafted.

2.  It’s more funny than political.

3.  Men dressed as women.

On the other hand: 

4. Of course laughter is infectious and one clueless pom can happily enjoy the show amongst an audience who get all the jokes. A whole audience of poms would be a different thing.

5.  There would be no way to market the thing to a non-Aussie audience.

So I can’t see this show joining fine wine and Clive James on the list of great Australian exports. That's a shame. At least we can console ourselves with the shiraz.  

New Podcast: Voice of the Musical

Terrific new podcast from Tim Sutton: for musical writers, by musical writers. Really gets down to the nitty gritty.

Especially the Charles Hart interview in which he mentions George Orwell's rules of writing. Undoubted wisdom. But when it comes to lyrics, I think I'd modify rule number one:

"1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print."

Sometimes a familiar figure of speech works a treat and what seems banal in print comes alive in song:

"I'm Putting All My Eggs In One Basket"
"They Can't Take That Away From Me"
"I've Got You Under My Skin"
"Don't Cry For Me, Argentina" (erm...) 

More so than any other form, lyric-writing revels in ordinary, everyday language. In that sense, as a lyricist, there's nowhere to hide. It may not take more skill to be a poet or a novelist. But it takes more guts to be songwriter.

M is for Michael

And B is for Billington. The Guardian critic purviews the musical scene:

“But there's something unhealthy about a genre that persistently fails to generate exciting new work”

Unhealthy or just darn difficult?

"There seems little room any more for a musical that is not some form of cultural juggernaut or that trades on wit, lightness and charm…. But those happy days when the musical was a source of innocent pleasure seem far off." 

Musicals, even the witty, light and charming ones, are not about creating “innocent pleasure” but creating drama. Pleasure, innocent or otherwise, is a mere byproduct.

“Nowadays musicals have become so industrial in scale and expensive to produce that any form of risk has to be minimised from the start. Like the banks, musicals have become too big to fail."

The fiscal simile is misdeployed. The banks didn’t become too big to fail by minimising risk on their investments. Quite the opposite. Compared to the casino accounting some of the bankers were up to, it would have been far better if they'd sunk all their money into “Going for Gold - the new Tony Hadley musical”.

Their insurance policy turned out to be the increasingly-peeved taxpayer. As fun as it would be I doubt this will be the case if we do see more high-risk musicals. I can't imagine George Osborne announcing a special “Betty Blue Eyes” bailout.

If you’re looking for an expensive, unprofitable, taxpayer-dependent cultural juggernaut to compare to the banks, the Royal Opera House would much more on the money.

Guardian Hearts Big Steve

In an editorial, no less, and on the occasion of his lifetime achievement award from the Critic’s Circle:

“Sondheim's radicalism and lyrical ingenuity have often been appreciated more in Britain than at home” 

 That would be why they named a theatre after him.

“His work has been staged by the Royal Opera, ENO and the National Theatre; he's been the subject of a Prom; he's twice been Radio 3's Composer of the Week” 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I think this is the significance of Sondheim (at least in this country): he’s taken musicals upmarket.

“If we have embraced Sondheim's work, it is because he experiments within a popular tradition…” 

Although his experiments wound up turning a popular tradition into a far less popular one. By the time of Assassins he couldn’t get produced on Broadway.

“…and accepts that the function of art is to challenge and stimulate, not soothe and reassure” 

Art isn’t easy. Especially for Americans. 

By the way, what's with the “composer-lyricist” designation? I always thought he was a songwriter.

It's like when those new-fangled choreographer fellas started appearing on the Broadway billboards. Irving Berlin, for one, wasn't impressed:

“Chicks that did kicks aren’t doing kicks any more
They’re doing choreography” 

So it seems:

“Johns who wrote songs aren’t writing songs any more
They’re composer-lyricists”

At least it'll keep the editorialists happy.

Simple Answers to Simple Questions

Could Jesus Christ Superstar be a woman?

No.

Does someone have a good publicist?

Yes.

The Rhythm of Life Sciences

Matthew Cain, enthusiastic presenter of the Channel 4 series What Makes a Masterpiece?, has been asking what makes music tick (episode 2). 

Good question.

So he spoke to some scientists: one who had designed a computer which could “recognise” a hit song and another who stuck wires on people’s heads to see how music affected their brains.

The first bit of science begs the question, can a computer write a hit song?

In theory, maybe. The computer identified common traits of hit songs and grouped them in “clusters”. A new song could be tested and, if necessary, tweaked so that it came closer to one of the clusters, thus increasing it's hit potential. But could the computer create a song from scratch? The question was never asked directly but I would have thought it theoretically possible. Although given the fact that computers still can’t hold a 5-minute conversation, "I'm Dreaming of a Megabyte Christmas" may be a way off yet.

(It’s also worth pointing out that this computer only analysed music and, really, a hit song is the successful pairing of a particular bit of music with particular words which, presumably, would multiply the variables around a zillion-fold. So good luck clustering that. Then again, computers are good with zillions in a way that we’re not.)

The second bit of science - the wires and the brain - begs the question, who needs music?

If music is essentially a neuro-chemical effect on the brain and if this could be replicated by some simpler method of brain stimulation, then why bother with the tediously traditional and messy method of composing music which, ultimately, may not have the desired effect for the listener? Again, the programme didn’t explore this issue but, it seems to me, the possibility is there (although still a million miles away given the current technology).

So what does the future hold?

OK, I find it difficult to imagine a time when music is replaced by wires attached to your head. On the other hand I can imagine computers playing an increasingly significant role. In such a future perhaps music will split between “computer-generated” and “natural” in the same way that food has, in recent times, split between genetically-modified and organic. That is, the computer stuff will be cheaper, shinier and more voluminous but a few purists will still pay twice as much for what they like to think of as the "real thing". Most likely, as with food, music will probably be a hybrid and it will be increasingly hard to tell the difference.

For some this will sound reductionist alarm bells. Can the beauty of a Mozart aria be reduced to a computer programme? Can the majestic power of Beethoven’s 9^th ever be explained in terms of bio-chemistry? What about Peter Andre?

The bells have a point but shouldn't be so alarmed; in the end, music is irreducible. When a composer composes they don’t experience the act of composing as a robot churning out data. When a music listener listens they don’t experience the emotions generated as mere neuro-chemistry. Part of the experience is the feeling that something more is going on. So, even if the we had a full scientific understanding of how music works, our experience of music would still point us towards something beyond that understanding. If it didn't, then it wouldn't be music.


"To feel The Rhythm of Life
To feel the powerful beat
To feel the tingle in your fingers
To feel the tingle in your feet..."

Now that's a masterpiece. Spread the religion, Daddy.