The Distant Reach to Perfect Words
by Ari Koinuma on Oct.21, 2009, under Songwriting
The older I get, it seems that I am becoming increasingly pickier as a lyricist. Music has always poured out of me quite easily — it’s now more effortless than ever — but the words, well, they take their own sweet time.
I have my own ideals of what good lyrics is. It counteracts the gesture of the music, in my mind. So heavier and dramatic music tend to receive more esoteric and obscure words, while simple and plain tunes have words that just seem to swim closer to the surface. There’s art in both kinds — simple, ordinary lines can start strike a great chord, while I also enjoy the labor and discovery of digging into the challenging and mysterious.
But recently I dug up some of my grander prog-rock opus to have a run through them, and I realized how melodramatic and indulgent the words were. I’m going to have to scrape about half of the words to these songs and do them over. On these more impressionistic songs, I have grown to like the approach of picking out some interesting rhyming words first and then filling in the blanks to paint the picture. But it seems that I am far from perfecting the technique. Some songs take years and years to mature, with me changing out words, living without them for a while and coming back for a fresh look. But the songs I consider “done,” they tend to stay with me a long time. Still, the great many of the songs I consider the cream of my crop are songs that are over 10 years old.
Perhaps the words are getting harder because I’m trying hard not to repeat myself. With heros like Glen Phillips, Tori Amos and Townes Van Zandt, I still have a long, long ways to climb up.
