https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/ Guitar Noise Discussion Board en-US Fri, 05 Jun 2026 07:43:25 +0000 wpForo 60 https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-333028 Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:57:19 +0000
I've always been a big fan of Roy Orbison's - I remember reading an interview with him once, he said the actual mechanics of songwriting were a mystery to him; he just wrote down what he was feeling, and somehow he'd fit his lyrics in with the music. Might be an interesting little exercise - time permitting, of course - to have a good listen to, for example, "Pretty Woman" and counting syllables for each line!

Another thing I always try to bear in mind is that generally, the writer (in this particular forum, anyway!) will have an idea where he/she's going musically - even if they haven't got the fine details of the music worked out, they'll generally have a pretty good idea of how they're going to phrase each line, etc, by the time they post the song.

Just a few quick thoughts there - I'm one of those people who doesn't delve too much into the intricacies of songwriting, I generally find if I try too hard to understand how something works, I lose a little of the magic!

:D :D :D

Vic]]> Sunday Songwriters Group Vic Lewis VL https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-333028 https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-332965 Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:11:38 +0000
Rock on!
D 8)]]> Sunday Songwriters Group DylanBarrett https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-332965 https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-332907 Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:43:51 +0000
Looks like you got A LOT of feedback already :wink:

Suggestion:
I would put the chorus in third person as most of the listeners are NOT the radio management, but the ideas still come across.

Controversial Kenny is gonna save THEIR (or make THE) day
His sun is always shining while we're reaping in the hay (OK TO LEAVE-we're meaning the common folk listening in while working)
THEY'll wallow in THEIR ratings and we'll revel in his class
But when he reaches boiling point THEY're gonna fire his arse

James]]> Sunday Songwriters Group jamestoffee https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-332907 https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-332839 Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:18:17 +0000 But I do think meter is extremely important in lyrics - and not just the syllable count, but the metric feet involved. In fact, I think it's even more important in lyrics than in poetry. We're intending to put it to music, which also has a meter - if they don't match up, it won't flow. That doesn't mean we have to match every syllable to a beat, or that we can't stretch out the spacing between words - but it does mean the stresses should fall on strong beats. +1 to that too. Good lyrics always seem to give the singer good words in the right places. My only contention is that the natural stress points of the music should be the ones that take the front seat in the thinking if you're trying to write songs as opposed to poems. I've doubtless become a bore about it, but it's borne of frustration, not just at wading through some pretty dire words only submissions at the other song forum, but also with my own inability to play and sing with the abilities I'd like. So I can fall into the very trap that I'm ranting about - writing more schoolboy poetry instead of proper songs. :?

Cheers,

Chris]]> Sunday Songwriters Group Chris C https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-332839 https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-332832 Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:59:08 +0000
A good example of bad repetition being fixed by good delivery: the opening line of Whitney Houston's "Greatest Love of All"... I believe that children are our future. Whenever I hear that "arr arr" it makes my skin crawl. That didn't stop it from being a mega-hit, but every time I hear it the mental image I have is a couple of circus seals tossing a ball back and forth.

But I do think meter is extremely important in lyrics - and not just the syllable count, but the metric feet involved. In fact, I think it's even more important in lyrics than in poetry. We're intending to put it to music, which also has a meter - if they don't match up, it won't flow. That doesn't mean we have to match every syllable to a beat, or that we can't stretch out the spacing between words - but it does mean the stresses should fall on strong beats.

In your example of "Stand By Me", the opening is an anapest: weak/weak/strong; starting on a weak syllable is called an anacrusis in poetry too, and the natural downbeat is on "night". The lyric scans "When the night has come and the land is dark" Not only does every stressed syllable fall on a strong beat musically, the poetic meter is also perfect: anapest-iamb-anapest-iamb. Many songs won't line up as you'd expect it on straight reading, but almost all great lyrics do line up internally... you can take great liberties with how the two meters (music/words) interact, but that's actually easiest to do when each one can also stand on its own.]]> Sunday Songwriters Group NoteBoat https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-332832 https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-332827 Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:26:21 +0000
First, thanks to all that have read and commented - it really was a first draft so I was expecting quite a few tweaks to be thrown into the mix.

I can see that the word 'donkey' would have fooled a few folks - I really should have read it through after posting. :roll:

I can see that I am my own worst enemy here by not posting the music to go with the lyrics - I've been doing that a lot lately and I feel a bit of a fraud (to myself), but can't seem to get around to recording anything. I do sing some sort of tune with the lyrics, but don't often play it out and write it down... :oops: yeh Yeh - I know... :oops:

I have to agree with Chris that it's not poetry and the lyrics sometimes sound better withing the context of the musical notation than when just written down - but I always will take note of the comment.

Any song that I have submitted to this thread WITHOUT music will almost certainly be rewritten with different words or whole lines to make it fit with the score, that's why I tend not to alter many lyrics after they've been commented on, because I know that it may, or may not work with the music.

Thank you all for taking the time to read and comment - I really must start putting some music to my lyrics again.

Rock on!
D 8)]]> Sunday Songwriters Group DylanBarrett https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-332827 https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-332820 Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:11:13 +0000
I'm going to play with fire here by presenting an alternative view to a couple of NoteBoat's comments. :shock:

Firstly, I though that the repeat of the word “say” was fine. I definitely get the point that if something jumps out as being awkward, then it's always worth paying attention to. But I think that the wrong tool might be in use here - the eye - and that the appropriate way to judge the effectiveness of songs lyrics is really by ear. It's a common problem with trying to assess lyrics without knowing what music they're designed to work with.

Repetition in music is a standard tool, and I don't think that it's whether you repeat something that matters but how it can be sold by the singer. There's a big difference between writing to be heard and writing to be viewed by a reader. What can sound great in a song can look very ordinary indeed on the page (I spent some time working through a couple of songbooks of ‘Hits', and read some of the biggest tripe I'd ever seen, from a regular writer's point of view, especially with songs that I didn't know the music to and could read only what was on the page, uninfluenced by recalling a singer ).


If I was singing that pair of lines I'd probably be emphasising the word “shouldn't” - which is the key part of the idea. The repeat of “say” could be used as a useful piece of continuity, pushed forward more the second time and used as part of a double punch with “anyway”. Or.... lots of options when you've got control of the singer and the music...


On the same general beef about the need to judge lyrics by ear rather than by eye, I'd agree with Tom that the meter of a song is important (and I had exactly the same initial thought as he did about the word “overflowing”), but I don't think that you can tell what it actually is without hearing the music - because song lyrics don't march to the same beat as spoken poetry does. It's the big difficulty I have with trying to accurately rate the ‘words only' submissions here. Unless they have a music track to go with them, we're just fitting our own guesswork over the top of somebody else's words, and then more or less rating our own guesses.


I think that the way to approach writing (or reviewing) song lyrics is to think like a singer, not like a poet. Thinking too much like a poet, particularly the old fashioned kind can lead to rather stiff and predictable patterns. I'm referring to counting syllables. A singer sells a song in a different way to an orator or a poet, and predominantly works with the beats of the music not the syllables of the words. Here's simple example, from an arrangement of Stand By Me in an easy songbook. It starts "When the night has come and the land is dark". Ten simple syllables and, frankly, I couldn't guess the shape of the tune from looking at the words. So here's what the arrangement in the book does with it:

“When the” -
Despite what you might think casually off the page, that is not beats one and two of the first 4 beat bar. In fact it's a ‘pick up measure' (anacrusis?) and both words get an eighth note each. So the first two words fit into one beat only (which does not fall at the beginning of a regular bar).

“night” -
Dotted half note. So that single word takes up three beats on its own.

“has” -
one quarter note - i.e. one beat.

“come” -
has an entire 4 beat bar all to itself.

“and the land is” -
Any guesses? Well, it starts with a rest, so no syllables at all on that beat. “and the” is squeezed into the second beat, and then “land” and “is” get a beat each.

"dark"
Another dotted half note - three beats. But that's not the end of the bar. The first two words of the next line are squeezed into the last beat too.... :)

That's of course if the singer does exactly as they're told by the score, which they probably won't anyway. If you put a really accurate stopwatch on them they would often be starting and/or finishing a touch either way (or more, depending on the style of singing). Singers create their effects by playing around with the words, and how they place them in relation to the beat. They don't just line up beats and syllables (unless they're satisfied with a pretty dull song).

When I first tried singing that version of Stand By Me I did it from alleged ‘memory' and didn't pay attention to the music. The result didn't bear much relationship to the score - including skipping an entire bar by singing “night has come” over one bar instead of two. :o That probably wouldn't matter much in my lounger-room, but would clearly mark me as a lazy amateur if I did it when playing with others.

Anyway... I'm ranting. :oops:

Dylan, I liked the idea and many of the lines. If it were mine the next stage would be to try and nail down two things - the beat and mood of the music, and the most effective story shape for the lyrics. Once I had decided exactly what I was trying to say about Kenny and how to move the ideas through to some kind of conclusion, punchline, resolution, final comment or whatever, then I'd chuck out the creaky lines and rhymes and ensure that the replacements served both the beat and the story line. Oh, and I'd type ‘arse' too, the forum nanny doesn't speak English English.

Good going so far.

Cheers,

Chris]]> Sunday Songwriters Group Chris C https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-332820 https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-332732 Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:49:34 +0000
Will comment in full later, but I like the idea behind this piece a lot. LOL - must be early - I didn't even catch that! The meter there is fine with the uncensored word (I guess I assumed it was donkey donkey and the second one disappeared!)]]> Sunday Songwriters Group NoteBoat https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-332732 https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-332725 Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:29:10 +0000 And gave him Gold his final run......
This part I don't really follow, but it might be a cultural thing. Refers to the oldies station, Capital Gold, which was the last radio station to employ Kenny. Used to be available only to those in London and surrounding areas, but thanks to the wonder of the interweb, it's now available on Cable TV or computer. On the rare occasions when I'm not in the mood for classic rock, it's my go-to station for oldies - mostly 60's, 70's and 80's, nice mixture of pop/rock/soul.

http://www.mygoldmusic.co.uk/Default.asp

BTW, Dylan, you might enjoy this link to the Radio London Fab 40....goldmine of information!

http://www.radiolondon.co.uk/ (Click on the Big L Fab 40 Charts link - the radio London link will take you to the home page, some interesting stuff there too!)

As for the song....well, I think Noteboat covered just about everthing there with some good constructive criticism. Suffice to say I was a big fan of Kenny's, both on radio and TV (it's all in the best possible taste!) so I'm looking forward to hearing the polished version.

:D :D :D

Vic]]> Sunday Songwriters Group Vic Lewis VL https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-332725 https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-332721 Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:23:28 +0000
Will comment in full later, but I like the idea behind this piece a lot.]]> Sunday Songwriters Group Scrybe https://guitarnoise.forum/sunday-songwriters-group/y7-week-35-controversial-kenny-dylan-barrett/#post-332721