I’ve noticed that it’s a common practice to see songs that are written by two people; one writes the music and another writes the words. The question is, why? To me it makes no sense that two different people would write one song. Is it because one of them is no good at writing music, but is great on lyrics? To me, it’s like two people driving a car, one to steer and one to work the pedals.
Anyway, when this is done, is the music usually written first and then the lyrics added, or the other way around, or do they work together? Is it just a two-heads- are-better-than-one thing?
While the question asked is a good General Question, I’m gonna move it to Cafe Society, where questions about the Arts, Music, Cooking and other things reside.
Speaking someone who’s never created music or lyrics, it’s always seemed weird for me too. You think if you’re righting lyrics, you’d have some music in mind.
What about poets? Do all poets need to be musicians, to have “music in mind” when they write words?
Seriously, there’s nothing mysterious about it. Yes, you can write words and music at the same time, if that’s how your brain works, but if you think about it, in any song with more than one verse, at some point somebody has to be fitting words to music already made. So clearly, music-first is not just a viable strategy, but one that has to be used a lot.
On the other hand, if you have some words in mind already, they can be used as a sort of structure to hang the music off. It actually can help in a lot of creative endeavours to have constraints rather than just a blank canvas (real or metaphorical) to work off.
Also, just because a song is fully written by one person, doesn’t mean they did the words and music at the same time.
That’s exactly it, and when you have adebt collaboration between the two, it can run as fine-tuned a machine as any single songwriter. Richard Rodgers wrote fantastic music that served both the lyrics of Lorenz Hart & Oscar Hammerstein equally well, though they were stylistically very different. George Gershwin was as fine an American composer as ever lived, but he needed his brother Ira for the words. Obviously, in the age of Lennon-McCartney, it became more common for both parties to do the heavy lifting in both disciplines, but for decades, such legendary pairings as Arlen-Harburg (“Over the Rainbow”), Fields-McHugh (“I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, Baby”), Warren-Dubin (“42nd Street”), Styne-Cahn (“I’ll Walk Alone”), and Kander-Ebb (“Cabaret”)–not to mention endless variations as songwriting pairs switched off and teamed up–divided the labor of music and lyrics separately.
All I want to point out is that a lot of songs are effectively poems set to music. Poetry, while it has some rhythm, has no real melody. There is no reason to have any “music” in mind when writing them.
Since we are not in GQ, I’ll also offer an opinion. It wouldn’t surprise me if a lyricist actually did have a sort of melody in mind, and the musician fleshed it out, and wrote the parts. This adds a level of complexity that would be hard to indicate on the byline.
And it goes back further than that. Take opera, where one person wrote the music to another’s libretto. Or classical art songs (Lieder), where typically the composer set a pre-existing poem to music. Or look through a hymnal: it’s fairly typical for one person to have written the words and another the music, and sometimes their lifetimes don’t even overlap: someone will have written words that fit the meter of an existing tune, or vice versa.
I think it’s just that writing good music and writing good lyrics are two separate arts/crafts/skills, that don’t always occur together in the same person.
Certainly in the realm of theatre, it is much more common to collaborate. Wagner and Sondheim are the two notable exceptions that first come to mind. Mozart had DaPonte and Schikaneder, Verdi had lots of different fellows but Boito is arguably the most successful, Sullivan had Gilbert, Gershwin had Gershwin, Rogers had Hart and later Hammerstein - the list goes on.
Music and lyrics are pretty big specialties, and the more complex the writing on both sides, the greater the challenge for one single artist.
If you want some fascinating reading, look for the correspondence between Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hoffmansthal for a profound examination of each artists process.
If you read lots of examples, you’ll find lots of examples of the lyrics being written first and the music after and lots of example of the tune coming first and the lyrics written to fit. That’s true whether it is one or two people who do the composing.
The same is true for any collaboration. There are as many ways to do as there are people.
I write songs and I am not musical. So I have to have a musican to get the music down. I do much better when I have a tune and can put words to it. But when I have a tune and give it to a musican he will always come up with a much more complex bit.
In otherwords, my music will be like “Mary Had A Little Lamb…” It’ll be just a bit of music enough to put words in. But I don’t have the ability to expand on it.
A lot of times I will write new words to old music, give it to someone and he/she will come up with music that’s totally different. So I can take a song like Madonna’s Vogue use the same music and write new words to it. I’ll give it to someone who will write 100% new music to it.
On the other hand once the music is written you often have to go back and correct the words. Some words are not singable, at least not with the music. You may have to alter lines to fit the music written. A few times I’ve done this and wound up writing something substantially different from what I intended.
There are lots of ways of doing this. Some songs are truly a colaboration, others the lyrics are written to music and other teams prefer writing music to lyrics
I write songs and I am not musical. So I have to have a musican to get the music down. I do much better when I have a tune and can put words to it. But when I have a tune and give it to a musican he will always come up with a much more complex bit.
In otherwords, my music will be like “Mary Had A Little Lamb…” It’ll be just a bit of music enough to put words in. But I don’t have the ability to expand on it.
A lot of times I will write new words to old music, give it to someone and he/she will come up with music that’s totally different. So I can take a song like Madonna’s Vogue use the same music and write new words to it. I’ll give it to someone who will write 100% new music to it.
On the other hand once the music is written you often have to go back and correct the words. Some words are not singable, at least not with the music. You may have to alter lines to fit the music written. A few times I’ve done this and wound up writing something substantially different from what I intended.
There are lots of ways of doing this. Some songs are truly a colaboration, others the lyrics are written to music and other teams prefer writing music to lyrics
Most musical composing teams worked because one person was a good composer but so-so lyricist (if he could write lyrics at all) and the other was a good lyricist but not a composer. Neither would succeed on their own, but by matching strengths, you ended up with something better than either could create.
Broadway songwriting teams generally worked that way for years. Usually, one was the lyricist and the other the composer. About the only major Broadway composers who did both were Frank Loesser, Meredity Willson (who also wrote the books for his mucials) and Stephen Sondheim (and I’m strongly of the opinion that Sondheim is much better when he had a good composer to work with, like Leonard Bernstein and Jule Styne, and really should have worked as a lyricist and left the songwriting to others).
In rock music, especially after the rise of the singer-songwriter, it’s more usual for someone to write music and lyrics. There are a few lyricists that don’t write music – Keith Reid, Bernie Taupin, for example. But with a band, you don’t often have the luxury of hiring someone to just write the words, so people write both lyrics and music.
(one exception – Adler and Ross (The Pajama Game & Damn Yankees both wrote songs and composed lyrics and would help out the other with tunes or words as necesary.
Then you have Rush’s songwriting process. When those guys decide it’s time to make another record, they all get together at a house in the mountains of Ontario or Quebec or wherever it is. Neil Peart sits in a room at one end of the house with a computer and a small drum kit, and just writes lyrics. Meanwhile, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson sit in a room at the other end of the house with their guitars and simple recording equipment, and just jam and come up with music while recording everything they do.* When Neil has something written he e-mails it to Geddy and Alex, who read the lyrics and then pick out stuff they’ve come up with that they think will work with the lyrics Neil came up with. Then they stick it all together and Geddy comes up with a vocal line, and they record a rough track which gets e-mailed back to Neil who tweaks the lyrics to better fit the music and comes up with a rough drum part.
I think that’s one reason Rush’s music is so unique - the lyrics aren’t written to the music and the music isn’t written to the lyrics. The two parts are created completelyindependently and then it’s a matter of mix & match and see what works.
Actually, now that Neil lives in L.A. he writes his lyrics there, but Geddy and Alex still get together, and the process is otherwise pretty much the same. It’s only when they’ve agreed on how the songs will go that they actually get together as a full band to work out the details and polish everything up.
Another example from the rock world would be the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia writing music to go with with Robert Hunter’s lyrics, and Bob Weir writing music for (sometimes) Hunter’s and (other times) John Barlow’s lyrics.
From the modern classical world, John Adams has written the music for operas with libretti (is that the right plural?) by Peter Sellars (Dr. Atomic) and Alice Goodman (Nixon in China). Lucas Foss has set texts by many, many poets and prose authors to music (Auden, Kafka, Housman, Nietzche, in Time Cycle, Wallace Stevens, Shakespeare, Yeats, Goethe, in other compositions, and various Biblical texts). Steve Reich’s Tehillim sets some of the Psalms to (incredibly beautiful) music. The list is too long to carry on here.
In fact, I can’t think of a single classical composer who wrote his/her own words. Doesn’t mean there’s never been one, of course. Can anyone think of one? I’m really curious.
Another example that comes to mind is that of Bernie Taupin and Elton John. Taupin used to write the lyrics at his residence and mail them to Elton, who composed the music. That’s where the name of the tribute album Two Rooms comes from. Today, Taupin still writes the lyrics and nowadays he emails them to Elton.
Yeah, Richard Wagner is the first one who comes to mind. Ruggero Leoncavallo wrote his own libretto for Pagliacci.
Arrigo Boito wrote both the libretto and the music for Mefistofole.
It’s not very common, but it isn’t unheard of, either.
Really unusual example from the rock world – the B-52s. Basically, the drummer and bass player would start playing a riff and Fred Schneider would free associate lyrics. They’d jam for awhile until the lyrics started working and then they’d write them down.
