The Hardest Part of a Song to Write

What’s the hardest part of a song to write, assuming you’re not a genius who can make up an entire song in three minutes (which is most of us)?

For my money, it’s the second verse. The chorus usually comes to you in your first blast of inspiration, so that’s the easiest part. After that the first verse, because you’re all full of things to say that build off of the chorus. Then a bridge is no big deal (if you need one), because you basically don’t need to do any more than come up with a short lyrical idea and put a key change on the end.

But the second verse can be surprisingly hard. Unless you’re writing one of those super-formulaic story-songs (highschool prom, married life, nursing home, done—love ya Mark Schultz), it can sometimes feel like you used up all your good ideas in the first verse and now you’re stuck. “Wait, you mean I have to come up with more than one new thought because unlike the bridge this is still verse-length?”

I’ve lost count of the number of partially finished songs I have floating around just because I haven’t found the time or the discipline to write that second verse. Even though it doesn’t even have to be as long as the first verse (most second verses aren’t).

Is there anyone who’d like to share his thoughts on this? I know I have songwriter friends who read, mostly lurkers (one I didn’t even know I had until she left a solitary negative comment—ain’t that how it is). You guys know you’re welcome to chime in at any time.

Oh, Just Sing About Your Girlfriend Already

They’re a soft target, most worship songs. Partly because they tend to be lousy musical compositions, but also partly because they tend to be mushy and indistinguishable from love ballads bar the occasional “God” and “Jesus” thrown in. In short, they’re all-around lousy songs.

One day I was in a cruel mood. So I thought I would try taking a couple of these fluff-fests and seeing how they fared when set next to the genuine article: real, bona fide love songs.

It’s not pretty.

Take, for example, Big Daddy Weave’s “Every Time I Breathe”:

Now compare it with Brad Paisley’s “She’s Everything”:

Fact: I’d rather hear Brad Paisley sing this song about his wife than hear Big Daddy Weave sing that song about God. Not only is the romantic language far more comfortable and appropriate, but the writing actually holds my interest. A novel concept.

Let’s try again with something a little different, a song that’s not technically worship but has a “vertical” orientation and got played a lot on Christian radio:

This one gives a laundry list of things the singer “questions” before concluding with, “The one thing I don’t question is You. You really love me like you say you do.” God is the fixed point in the singer’s life.

Okay as far as it goes, but when one of your main hooks runs, “Hold me, come on, hold me. I need your love. Hold me. Come on now…,” and when, moreover, the song is addressed to God, this is an epic fail. It’s an epic fail anyway, but the God part makes the fail even more epic. Plus, if you seriously “question” your “ability to judge wrong from right,” you’ve got some issues. And if you’re not sure what race you are, you’ve got even bigger issues. (Yes, yes, I know that’s not what he meant, but I couldn’t resist.) The whole thing just comes off very trite. It fails to make me take it seriously or provoke any thought, even though presumably it’s supposed to.

Compare this with the very similarly themed but vastly superior “Kathy’s Song,” by Paul Simon (lyrically anyway, though admittedly the melody isn’t particularly inventive). Note in particular how Simon self-consciously takes some of the language commonly used in reference to the divine and works it into this very horizontal piece (and how much more elegantly this succeeds than the reverse operation):

So you see I have come to doubt

All that I once held as true.

I stand alone without beliefs.

The only truth I know is you.

Or even more explicit: “There but for the grace of you go I.” And yet this lyric is far more believable, profound, and thought-provoking than the Coleman song, which actually is referring to God.

Here’s the brutal truth: If you’re going to talk to or about God, you need to expand your vocabulary. Because if all you’re doing is writing a love song with “God” and “Jesus” thrown in, I’ve got news for you: The rest of the world writes way better love songs. Like so much better it’s not even funny. Your job is to prove that a relationship with God is deeper and more holy than any human love relationship could ever be. Will you still write about love? Absolutely. The love of a father for his child. The love of a shepherd for his sheep. The love of a creator for his crowning creation. But what you write for your girlfriend? Keep that separate from what you write for God. If that’s something you need to work on, do us a favor and just sing about your girlfriend until you figure out how to write better songs about your God.

That is all.

David Phelps on the Spiritual & the Secular

Some people are wondering whether or not to classify David Phelps’ upcoming Classic project as “southern gospel,” because it contains some songs that are more inspo or classical, even though Phelps has sung in gospel music all his life. I think that’s really just a matter of what criteria you’re going by—depending on whether you’re categorizing by singer or songs chosen, either approach could make sense. But, on the topic of secular vs. sacred, I came across this interesting little exchange between Phelps and Bill Gaither in the promo video for the DVD:

Bill: Some people might say, well why aren’t you singing gospel songs? Of course I’ve always said the gospel leaks out in a lot of different kind of ways, right?

David: That’s right. I grew up singing gospel music, and that’s so much a part of me. And then I would think, you know a painter can paint a picture of a cross and then paint a beautiful field. And it doesn’t say anything about who he is spiritually, or is one more spiritual than the other…? When it comes down to it, secular is really our choice. Because everything that comes our way, we can learn something spiritual from it.

I’m not going to say much about this because I want it to spark discussion amongst yourselves (perhaps a few song-writers who might be reading can offer some positive, constructive commentary—that would be cool!) However, I’ll say this much: I think that in the end I know what Phelps is getting at, and I agree with him… to a point. Around the last sentence is where our opinions start to diverge, unless he was saying something much looser/sloppier than he actually meant. What about you?

Songwriting: The Old, the New and the Ugly

I recently subscribed to Wayne Haun and Joel Lindsay’s new You Write Songs site. I’m excited about this and glad to see that two experienced vets of the biz are investing some time and effort in encouraging the next crop of young songwriters. As someone who’s just ventured into this field myself very recently, I figured I need all the tips I can get.

After subscribing, I watched a video that was made available to subscribers only. It was Joel Lindsay’s top five common songwriting mistakes.

I don’t want to give away all five, but I did want to discuss one point on which I definitely disagreed with Lindsay. (Hey, I didn’t have a problem criticizing John Piper’s preaching, so this is small potatoes. Anyway it’s been way too long since I wrote a post on songwriting, and I have at least one faithful reader who says they’re his favorite! So Rick, this is for you…)

Ballad Buffet!

“It’s a ballad!”

“Oh, that’s helpful.”

There’s been some recent discussion around the southern gospel blogosphere over the vagueness of the generic term “ballad” by itself. I personally believe David Bruce Murray nailed it with his categorizations, even though they were tongue-in-cheek. There’s nothing wrong with the term, but without appropriate descriptive adjectives, it really doesn’t tell the reader much. But if you couple it with its proper modifier(s), you’re on your way.

So instead of describing the different categories of ballad in depth, I’m going to share some of my favorite ballads from all genres, just for fun and just to show how much variety they can have. And just to make it a little more fun, I won’t say what songs I pick, to try to tantalize my readers into clicking on them out of curiosity. (Though I will give you a hint that the artists range from Josh Ritter to Celine Dion to Journey to Sandi Patti.)

The Classic Ballad

Okay, so “classic” may be a kind of generic term in itself, but when I use it, I mean a long, lyrical piece of poetry that tells a story, in a folksy musical setting. The reason I call it “classic” is that it probably represents the earliest and purest manifestation of the term. Here is a perfect example of the classic ballad.

The Folk Ballad

A folk ballad can be the classic kind that tells a story, but it can also include political rants, musings on the meaning of life, or just about anything that occurs to a dude or dudette with a guitar. As DBM said, they tend to run long. Very long. Here is a classic example of such a ballad.

The Country Ballad

The country ballad typically tells a story as well, but it revolves around a limited set of themes. Familial or romantic love, heaven, and patriotism would probably claim the vast majority of country ballads. Here is a perfect example of a country ballad.

The Piano Pop Ballad

I sort of made up this category. It’s a pop song that begins with the focus squarely on the piano and then stays there instead of drowning it out in guitars and drums (see the power pop ballad). Here’s one of my favorite examples.

The Power Pop Ballad

Otherwise known as inspirational or torch songs, these are generally sung by female divas, with an adoring crowd of fans waving lighters in the audience. One or more ear-piercing high notes are regularly involved. Here is a perfect example.

The Rock Ballad

A ballad that rocks. You don’t HAVE to have long hair,  a dirty ‘stache/scruffy beard, or a sleeveless shirt to perform it… but it does help. Observe, a perfect example. There might be lighters involved here too, except they would be real cigarette lighters, not glowsticks, candles, or whatever the cute little girls are waving in the power pop ballad.

The Orchestrated Ballad

This is the category into which many southern gospel ballads fall. It starts quietly but dramatically and builds to a huge finish with all the instruments pulling out all the stops. It also covers inspirational anthems from the Steve Green/Sandi Patti era. Here is a classic example.

There might also be room, in between country and folk, for the Western ballad as its own category. Lyrically it tends to take a classic form, but instrumentation can be sparse, orchestral or anything in between. “I Hung My Head” is an example of a Western ballad that’s been interpreted both ways.

Discuss… Do you agree with my categories? Are there some categories I left out? What’s your favorite kind? (Oh, and it’s just possible that I put the wrong Youtube links in the wrong places, so if you were expecting Sandi Patti and got Journey instead… let me know and I’ll fix it. )

Folk Rhyme Meets Southern Gospel: He Saw it All

The Booth Brothers’ “He Saw It All” was probably embraced largely by virtue of its uniqueness. Everyone knows the picture the lyrics paint—a mute man talking, a deaf girl listening, a crippled man running, and a blind man who saw it all. It’s clever and fresh-sounding.

What some people might not know (and what I didn’t know until very recently), is that this concept isn’t new at all. In fact, it’s very old. If you don’t believe me, here is a folk poem, variations of which have been passed around among children  since the 19th century. (Hat tip to this website, which contains even more information.)

1. One fine day in the middle of the night,
2. Two dead boys* got up to fight, [*or men]
3. Back to back they faced each other,
4. Drew their swords and shot each other.
5. One was blind and the other couldn’t see
6. So they chose a dummy for a referee,
7. A blind man went to see fair play,
8. A dumb man went to shout “hooray!”
9. A paralyzed donkey passing by,
10. Kicked the blind man in the eye,
11. Knocked him through a nine inch wall,
12. Into a dry ditch and drowned them all,
13. A deaf policeman heard the noise,
14. And came to arrest the two dead boys,
15. If you don’t believe this story’s true,
16. Ask the blind man he saw it too!

What’s interesting is that whoever originally conceived it, it was for a completely nonsensical purpose, as a joke. With “He Saw It All,” of course, it’s not nonsensical at all. The blind man really did see it all.

Poetry in Song: “If We Answer”

Okay, time for more music. I have at least one reader who wanted more in the Poetry in Song series after I kicked it off a couple months ago. Here is another installment, finally.

Today I’m featuring an intriguing number from Steve Green, off of his excellent album Woven in Time. The sound is uncharacteristically gritty for him (believe it or not, it reminds me just an itty bitty bit of the theme music for LadyHawke, BUT it’s not THAT bad so DON’T STOP READING PLEASE, THANK YOU), but the light rock feel works surprisingly well with the lyrics. Just read them out loud and feel the rhythm. Pause to savor the satisfaction of each perfect rhyme. It’s not absolutely perfect, but it comes close. Written by Doug McKelvey, Phil Naish and Scott Dente (I don’t know who handled the lyrics or if it was a collaborative thing):

He is fierce and He is tender
He’s our judge and our defender
And He calls us to surrender
For He loves us to the core
He is frightening and resplendent
He is present and transcendent
He’s enmeshed and independent
And He cannot love us more

(Chorus)

So He calls our names
And we fear Him for His goodness
For we know He won’t be tamed
So He calls our names
And we wonder if we answer
Will we ever be the same?

He’s a comfort and a terror
A destroyer and repairer
He’s more terrible and fairer
Than our mortal tongues can say
He is hidden and revealing
He’s appalling and appealing [<--arguably the weakest line---just a bit of over-extension]
He’s our wounding and our healing
And He will not turn away

Holy Lamb of God
And He cannot love us more
Holy Lamb of God

He is wild, He is wonder
He is whispering and He is thunder
He is over, He is under
And He suffered for our gain
He’s a comfort and a danger
He’s a father and a stranger
He’s enthroned and in a manger
And He says we’re worth His pain

Listen:

A Hymn Bridge Done Right: “Greater Still”

Some people think it’s “cheating” for a songwriter to make use of a hymn for the bridge of his song. The idea is that the song needs to be good enough to stand on its own, and falling back on a hymn to carry it at the climactic point is like using a crutch. I can see both sides to the debate. On the one hand, it is a slight disappointment when a writer doesn’t put in the effort to come up with a new thought of his own and instead “plays it safe.” On the other hand, there’s an evil part of me that says, “Hey, maybe he would have come up with something dreadful and ruined the song anyway, so perhaps it’s just as well that he let Charles Wesley handle it.”

All kidding aside, I guess I’m just more relaxed than some about hymn bridges. And sometimes it just works, mate. Case in point, the title track of Brian Free & Assurance’s album Greater Still. The piano begins with a suggestion of the melody for “Grace Greater Than Our Sin” and then launches into the intro for the song, which has Assurance’s signature “swing.” Another musical hint is dropped in the chorus on the phrase “God’s grace.” For the bridge, they finally go all the way and sing most of the chorus of “Grace Greater Than Our Sin,” syncopating the rhythm just slightly so that it fits with the rest of the song. They dive right back into the song chorus instead of singing the last line of the hymn chorus, after which the piano once more echoes the hymn melody to finish it off. It’s all done so tastefully and cohesively that the listener never once feels like the hymn has been awkwardly shoe-horned in just because everybody ran out of ideas. It’s woven into the fabric of the song as opposed to being tacked on.

Oh, I forgot to add that it has Tony Wood’s name on it, and I recently learned that Wayne Haun produced it. Which explains everything, of course.

Christian Doctrine and Music: How are They Connected?

Hat tip to Daniel Mount (and David Bruce Murray in a subsequent comment), for inspiring this post. Daniel put up a post asking for reader feedback on whether differences among Christian denominations can influence the way a Christian song lyric is crafted. DBM commented that he’d love to see how the discussion would proceed along a slightly different line: Do denominational differences influence stylistic differences in music? So I’ve decided to take it up here on southerngospelyankee.

My immediate reaction was “Yes, of course!” Many denominations are defined by their different musical styles. Black gospel is naturally associated with charismatics, southern gospel with Southern Baptists, and contemporary P & W with mainstream evangelicals. Even among Protestant hymns, there is a huge difference between an Anglican hymn and your average Charles Wesley/Fanny Crosby (I know, having sung many of both kinds). In our family we have made a joke out of “those Anglican tunes” that are so counter-intuitive and clunkily put together that you can barely even find your way through them. Even though in all fairness there were some great Anglican writers, let’s just say that Anglican hymnody as a whole is not known for its natural, singable melodies. (We also have a joke that Anglicans can’t sing.)

So denominational differences can certainly be tied to stylistic variations in music. That much is obvious. But I think the question may have been slightly different: Do doctrinal differences have a direct causal effect on how music is written? This question is less obvious to answer. It is one thing to say that a black gospel sound is part of the charismatic tradition, or that a southern gospel sound is part of the Southern Baptist tradition. It’s another thing to say that a writer’s theological beliefs will affect the music he writes (as distinguished from the lyrics he writes). We can find plenty of examples of correlation, but what about causation?

The first thing to come to mind is that musical style  can certainly be affected in cases where denominational principles rule out certain forms of music. So if a writer comes from a background where anything with a rock sound is considered to be evil, you will never catch him writing something with “an edge.” There are musical groups who follow that principle and consequently record within very restricted musical boundaries. Some even believe that there’s evil in the back-beat.

But at the same time, I see people and churches who have wildly different music, yet essentially the same doctrinal foundation. For example, Sovereign Grace Ministries produces music with a very contemporary, wall-of-sound feel, but at the same time they are passionate about writing meaningful, biblically correct lyrics, and one of their ballads was even picked up by the Booth Brothers. As another example, I recently watched some footage from Church On the Move in Oklahoma, and I couldn’t stand most of their music they were playing. Yet their pastor’s preaching is rock solid, with a southern accent you could cut with a knife. He seems like he’d be equally at home at the little brown church in the vale. Among artists, there are obviously many Southern Baptists in southern gospel, but there are plenty in CCM too. As one example, Christian rock group Casting Crowns has worked closely with Georgia’s Sherwood Baptist Church, who made Facing the Giants and Fireproof. However, to say that their music isn’t exactly southern gospel would be putting it mildly, even though doctrinally there may not be much to separate them from Signature Sound. And for our part, we have southern gospel artists meeting CCM halfway with a “progressive” sound, some of whom even take inspiration from secular music. (Odds are you’re more likely to catch Ernie Haase listening to Michael Buble than the Inspirations.)

On the other side of the coin, I’ve seen people with different denominational backgrounds working together and making music that all sounds very similar. For example, Paul Baloche and Matt Maher are Catholic singer/songwriters, but their worship songs have been recorded and sung world-wide, and they have worked with countless Protestant worship leaders and writers.

And to top it off, there are quite a few songwriters with cuts in both CCM and southern gospel. Perhaps the most remarkable example I’ve found is Tony Wood, who can literally write anything. He’s had cuts by everybody from Petra to ZOEgirl to Scott Krippayne to 4Him to the Booth Brothers. He’s worked with well-known CCM writers  and well-known southern gospel writers like Joel Lindsey and Jim Brady. Sometimes I wonder whether Christian music has ever fully realized how much it owes to Tony when I look at the sheer number of classic songs with his name on them. But in any case, whatever his denominational affiliation, it hasn’t stopped him from being versatile as all get-out. And he’s only one example. I could name others.

My conclusion is that ultimately, the place where doctrinal differences are most often going to manifest themselves is in the lyric. In general, there’s no similarly causal relationship between theology and musical style. It’s just going to be one giant mixed bag of sounds.

The Problem With Modern Songwriters, or Ears of Tin and Clunky Cliches

This is an experience that’s all too familiar for me: I’m listening along to a song, maybe I like it, maybe I don’t, but all of a sudden, there’s a word or phrase that just falls with a gigantic *THUD*. Instinctively, my ears cringe, and my face contorts, because it’s just too painful. In general, it makes me lose my appetite for the rest of the song, but occasionally I can overlook it and still enjoy the piece as a whole.

We’ve got a problem here, and the problem is that many contemporary songwriters don’t seem to understand something very basic: There are certain words and phrases that just shouldn’t be used in a song. Period. No, in case you were wondering, I don’t demand that every song be a Shakespearean sonnet. But every song is a form of poetry. Yet it seems like some people view a song lyric as more of a blog post or chatty e-mail than a form of poetry. If you’re deliberately writing something light/tongue-in-cheek/goofy, that’s one thing. But writers can be known to litter a song with howlers and take every word of it absolutely seriously.

Here are some examples of words that I have actually heard used in a song, in many cases multiple times. I won’t share names of the writers involved or names of any specific songs. These are just some cliches that I have “collected” so far (and I fear that I may collect more in the future):

cliche (Yes, using the word “cliche” is a cliche!)
opinion
relationships
criticize
concept
experience
problem(s)
prejudice
point of view
comfort zone (Words cannot express my loathing for this particular neologism.)

Maybe my readers can furnish a few more such specimens of the English language that have found their way where they have no business being. To be quite honest, I’d rather go back to the days when writers used (oh horror of horrors) words like thee and thou in their songs, but they actually knew how to write poetry. What a concept!

Look, in all seriousness, I’m not saying you have to write like Isaac Watts to write a great song. There are lots of modern songs that I love. I’m just saying that writers need to get an instinctive sense of when something just sounds modern and artificial. A lot of them simply have a tin ear. These sorts of expressions don’t strike them as wrong because they just can’t hear what the problem is. Of course, this may not necessarily be their personal fault. It’s a problem that can be traced back to the breakdown of our educational system and the resultant cheapening of the English language that has left people impoverished.

However, this does not mean all hope is lost for the songwriter who wishes to improve. The first thing I would unhesitatingly recommend is that every songwriter who aspires to beautiful, precise language in his work should obtain a King James Bible. Other translations can be useful to help untangle unclear sections in the King James, but for sheer beauty of language, it is unrivaled. Read the Psalms out loud. Memorize them. Let the rhythm of the language get into your bones and your blood.

Second, he should steep himself in great poetry and literature in general. Pore over the work of the great hymn-writers. Soak in the mastery of Shakespeare and John Donne. Take Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and read entire passages out loud, letting the language roll around and off your tongue.

Finally, he should ask himself, “WWRMD?” Or, “What would Rich Mullins do?” Every good songwriter understands greatness in other writers when he sees it. Mullins was arguably the most gifted poet Christian music has ever seen, although Andrew Peterson is carrying the torch with considerable grace today.

At the end of the day, will our songwriter emerge as great as all of the above? Of course not. But, he will emerge with the ability to avoid ugly modern neologisms and clunky language without really giving it a second thought. And that’s a valuable skill all by itself.