datamusicata

I’d like to talk a little bit more about song writing today, as I did a show this weekend and talked to various folks about different aspects of the craft.

People frequently ask, “what comes first, the music or the words?” and of course, there is no right answer. Sometimes the words, sometimes the music, sometimes all at once, sometimes just a musical or lyrical phrase that sticks in your head and sometimes it’s just the title.

My pal, Stephen Bishop (www.stephenbishop.com) keeps notebooks full of titles and he almost always works from the title forward. Titles can be tricky, because you don’t want someone to confuse your song with another, or to think that instead of coming up with something yourself, you simply chose a title that had already been a hit.

While it is true that titles cannot be copyrighted, it doesn’t make any sense to take a title from a well known hit song. All that you do is invite comparison between your new song and the song that is already familiar and successful to the listener. You always end up on the short end of that stick, unless the title is so old that no one remembers the other song.

Another friend of mine, frequently got his ideas from book titles. He even wrote a song once from a McMurtry novel title, only to find out after he’d recorded and released the song that McMurtry had gotten the title of his novel from a Merle Haggard song...with the same title. Ouch!

For me, it is rare that I work from the title forward, with the notable exceptions of Mary January from the Eternal Contradiction (www.jamesleestanley.com/eternalcontra.html) and Daddy’s Eyes from the musical that I’m writing entitled Straight From the Heart. The song can also be heard on the Peter Tork/James Lee Stanley CD, Backstage At the Coffee Gallery – Live and on my Domino Harvest CD.

I usually start with a position or point of view that I’m trying to describe, but I have worked from chord progressions, as well as guitar licks, or melodies that spring full blown into my head. And once, I dreamed a song and woke up and wrote it down. Words and music all at once. It is also on the Domino Harvest CD. It’s called “Everybody Knows” because it’s obvious that no one does. At least they don’t behave that way. And yes, I have since come to find out that Leonard Cohen (www.leonardcohen.com) has written a brilliant song with that title.

And you are going to run into that as you go thru your creative life. Straight From the Heart, a beautiful song I wrote with my pal, John Capek (www.johncapek.com), that has become the finale song of the musical from the same name, is preceeded by no less than four other songs with that title; one a particularly wonderful one by Lowell George. I must admit that if I had heard his version first, I would have never written my song. But that’s the way this title game goes.

When Tom Robbins and I wrote the song, “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues” we thought, because he was the author of the book that that was a pretty safe title. It turns out that there are at least twenty songs with that title. When I was being considered for the job of musical director for several permutations of the film I even considered using every single one of them in the soundtrack. Imagine what that soundtrack album would have looked like. Every song with the same title but sung by different artists and written by different songwriters. A publishing nightmare.

All I can advise you to do is to write the best song you know how and derive the title from what you have said or how you have said it. That seems to be the safest and most original way of doing it.