Nekujak
My muse is demanding better working hours
While my first album (mentioned in a previous post) was being recorded, I was still playing out and writing new material. Among the new stuff, there was one song in particular that seemed to stand out and show promise. Roberta, my producer (whom you all met in the previous post 
), encouraged me to finish it so it could be included on the album.
This was one of those songs in which a fully formed chorus arrived almost instantaneously, but the verses were agonizingly slow to meterialize. It required a fair amount of soul digging, writing, rethinking, rewriting, more soul searching and more rewriting, to finally arrive at some verse lyrics I could tolerate and that appropriately complimented the chorus.
But then I had another problem. Try as I might, I couldn't come up with a workable melody for the verses. This was particularly aggravating since melodies were usually not a problem for me, but for whatever reason, I simply couldn't conjure a melody for the verses that had "sticking power" (my personal metric for a strong melody - if it "sticks", I can easily remember it the next day).
I kicked around ideas with Roberta, but nothing worked. Everything we came up with either sounded contrived, didn't flow, or was simply flat and lifeless, and most importantly, didn't do anything to enhance the meaning and emotion of the lyrics.
I felt stuck at a creative impasse. But then Roberta had a brilliant suggestion - why not speak the verses? There was a radio hit around that time, "Lullaby" by Shawn Mullins, in which the verses were spoken, and Roberta felt my song would be a perfect fit for the same treatment - and the best part was, I wouldn't have to flex my mediocre singing skills
So that's how we recorded it, and it turned out to be one of the better songs on the album. In fact, it became my first song to get signed to a licensing deal.
After that experience, I always kept the spoken lyric option in my back pocket, and have used it several times since. Not necessarily on entire verses, but maybe on a single line, a single verse, or a bridge, to add variety or emphasis. Whatever it takes to put the song over
), encouraged me to finish it so it could be included on the album.This was one of those songs in which a fully formed chorus arrived almost instantaneously, but the verses were agonizingly slow to meterialize. It required a fair amount of soul digging, writing, rethinking, rewriting, more soul searching and more rewriting, to finally arrive at some verse lyrics I could tolerate and that appropriately complimented the chorus.
But then I had another problem. Try as I might, I couldn't come up with a workable melody for the verses. This was particularly aggravating since melodies were usually not a problem for me, but for whatever reason, I simply couldn't conjure a melody for the verses that had "sticking power" (my personal metric for a strong melody - if it "sticks", I can easily remember it the next day).
I kicked around ideas with Roberta, but nothing worked. Everything we came up with either sounded contrived, didn't flow, or was simply flat and lifeless, and most importantly, didn't do anything to enhance the meaning and emotion of the lyrics.
I felt stuck at a creative impasse. But then Roberta had a brilliant suggestion - why not speak the verses? There was a radio hit around that time, "Lullaby" by Shawn Mullins, in which the verses were spoken, and Roberta felt my song would be a perfect fit for the same treatment - and the best part was, I wouldn't have to flex my mediocre singing skills
So that's how we recorded it, and it turned out to be one of the better songs on the album. In fact, it became my first song to get signed to a licensing deal.
After that experience, I always kept the spoken lyric option in my back pocket, and have used it several times since. Not necessarily on entire verses, but maybe on a single line, a single verse, or a bridge, to add variety or emphasis. Whatever it takes to put the song over
(Note: this video credits the song to Eddy Bee, which was the performer name I was using at the time.)
