About the Use of Lyrics

Unlike most rock music songwriters, we have never dealt with lyrics. We don’t know anything about writing lyrics. We’ve never done it before. It’s not our medium. Because writing lyrics was so alien to us, we had to develop an approach. We needed a few guiding principles.

One premise we worked on is that lyrics work on two levels-- verbal and non-verbal. There is the meaning of the lyrics and then there is how the words sound, the mood they create even if the person listening isn’t thinking about their content. We noticed that songs we admired worked on both levels; they had meaning, but they could also stand on their own without the meaning. The words had a pleasing flow that brought you in on a pre-rational level. For lyrics to work on this level, they need to flow easily and not draw too much attention to themselves. This means avoiding intellectual or awkward words and staying away from rock clichés. Each of these things could potentially break the spell, and disengage the listener. Examples of words that fit into these three categories respectively are “synchronicity,” “moot” and “foolish pride.” So we tried to avoid using these kinds of words.

What’s great about songs with singing in them is that the listener can sing along. We all do this, even if it is just silently in our heads. Most of the time, when we sing along, we aren’t thinking about the meaning of the words. In those moments the meaning has more to do with the simple fact that we have been moved to sing; we are connecting with the song by actually performing it. So we decided that if people were going to sing our words, we wouldn’t make them say things like “wizard” or “ironic.” It’s almost like the goal is to just get out of the way, so that the person driving alone in a car can do his or her thing without getting thrown off.

Another principle we agreed upon was that we would try very hard not to change a word’s natural emphasis. Our view is that if the word “flattered” is in your song, don’t have it with the emphasis on the second syllable. It just ends up making the authors look lazy. That’s not how the word is spoken, so don’t sing it that way. It seems to us that songwriters should keep working on a song until all the words fit in without having to be sung with a strange emphasis, but what do we know?

So we set out to pick simple words that flow off the tongue and do not draw too much attention to themselves or to the author’s “hand.” Nothing ruins work more than when a person tries to be clever. The idea was to make songs that at first glance, were so simple they could practically be sung around a campfire. That’s a lot harder than you might think. The trick is to do this and still have a little something going on in the song for those who are looking for it. And then perhaps even a little more when the song is considered in the context of the whole album.

We also felt that as lyricists, we should go ahead and commit to an idea rather than hide behind words that are obscure or ambiguous. It always seems to us like a bit of a cop out when people write a song and then say that it is about “whatever it means to you.” We’re not saying that this kind of approach to lyrics is bad; we’re just saying that this is not the right approach for us. Besides, we’re not poets. We’re not interested in clever wordplay. We’re just trying to connect with the few people who might happen to listen to our songs. We took on the task of lyric writing because there were some things we wanted to express. So we decided we might as well go ahead and try to express them in a fairly clear and straightforward manner. If the lyrics are too vague, abstract, or stream-of-consciousness, then they might not end up communicating anything. Music lovers who really take the time to dive into an album should be rewarded. There should be something going on that these people can actually feel and understand and perhaps, relate to. It doesn’t have to be real front door, but it should be there for the special few who have the ability to listen to music and really connect with it in a profound way. All songwriters should know about this, because all songwriters started out as fans. They were moved enough by a song to decide to try and make one themselves.

Ideally, whatever is going on should become clearer and more resonant when the album is absorbed in its entirety. This is like a reward for the people who go the distance. We tried to make the lyrics of all the songs relate to each other on some level (this includes the covers to some degree). We weren’t trying to make a concept album per se, but we did set out to make a cohesive body of music that had recurring themes and connecting concepts. We wanted each song to mean more in the presence of the others. We wanted each song to be part of a larger “gestalt.” In other words, if a person was only familiar with one song from the album, they wouldn’t understand it as well as someone who had listened to the whole album. The person familiar with only one song would be missing the context, the totality.

Consider the lyrics to “Shadows Part 2: ‘Sometimes my shadow leads, or it follows me, but we never seem to become one and the same.’” These are just words, sounds. We’re not saying these are the best lyrics in the world. But who cares? It’s ok if all they do is impart a bit of mood and give the listener something to sing along with. For people who want to pay a little more attention, the song might conjure up the image of a person walking down the street looking at her shadow as it changes orientation. But our hope is that someone who explores “Shadows Part 2” in conjunction with the rest of the album might instinctively look a little bit further, and consider how it fits in with the themes and images of the other songs. Originally, we thought we would need more lyrics for that song, because the whole song just has that one sentence. But then we decided that the people who listen to the whole album won’t need any more than that to understand what we are talking about. We have read interviews where certain famous musicians have said they don’t like to talk about the meaning of their lyrics. We don’t feel that way. If you look at our mission statement, it will become clear that for us to hide behind a veil of obfuscation, or to even use words like “obfuscation,” would not forward our cause.