Sonically, we’re at an all-time high.  The ability to capture the actual sound of the instruments in perfect, pristine quality has never been better.  Those who still grumble about the “coldness” of digital just haven’t been really listening lately.  The advancement of processing power and ram in computers has finally caught up and now the warmth of analog is back.

But much of the rest of the creative part of our industry is mired in mediocrity.  I blame this on humanity and our penchant to always try to attain perfection the easy way.   Nothing wrong with that except when it doesn’t work.

I just wrote a 7-part blog post (The IRA Awards) on great lyrics just to remind us of what could be, of the greatness of craft, of the delight of a well-lyricised song.  I write “remind us” because I think we’re losing track of a great tradition – the well written lyric.

Popular songs today are slaughtering the time-honored tradition of rhyme – “Blanch” does not rhyme with “France”, “father” does not rhyme with “mother” and “pets” does not rhyme with “let”.  In the good old days of craftsmanship the rhymes were perfect rhymes.  “Joy” with “boy”, “sorrow with “tomorrow” and “friend” with “end”, not “friend” with “again”.  But today, and the worst offender is rap, although the decimation of rhyme did not start there, today the state of rhyme in lyrics is at an all time low.

Also what’s with songs today that are so obtuse that we have no earthly idea what the songwriter is talking about?  I’ve heard young songwriters actually say that they don’t want their fans to really understand them – they want to maintain their mystery.  Ha!  This is really just an admission that as a lyricist, they haven’t a clue.  They have no idea how to tell a story, they know not the difference between a lyric and a poem, they have no craft.  Harsh words, perhaps, but unfortunately the state of the art.

OK, it’s a lot less expensive to make music these days – a lot less expensive to make cheesy music.  You can now actually buy music construction kits where some musician has made some tracks and then broken them down so that you can put them back together again.  Some people call this creativity.  It has perhaps a touch of creativity in it and it is perhaps educational, but really, isn’t it akin to painting by numbers?  Fill in the blanks created by someone else.  Complete the puzzle and call it creation.  Ha!  (he scoffs) Some of this reconstruction music actually makes it to the top of the charts!

I blame this on the youth that want the easy way to make music.  Play an instrument without having to waste time practicing.  Write music without ever really studying music.  Record music without ever really studying the art of audio engineering.  There is even now an accepted style of music called Garage – ie, sounds like you made it out in your dad’s garage… and boy does it ever!

Kids love it!  (Some kids love it.)  Oh look what Billy and Bobby down the street created last night!  Why they sound just like the Rolling Stones!  Somehow I doubt it…

I also blame the adults and my contemporaries who, in the name of money, have created product to facilitate the ease of making music, have gone overboard to sell this product to an undiscerning youth bent for stardom, and have, in fact, created music that the inexperienced can simply reconstruct and call their own, reveling in their brilliant creativity.  Egads!  What ego!  All in the name of their 15 minutes of fame!

OK, this is turning into a rant, but I’m passionate about this because I see it ruining the art of music making – an art that I’ve spent my life studying.  Today, popular music, to a large extent has fallen to its knees, overwhelmed by its lack of creativity.  Great songs are seldom written any more.  There are still great records out there, but how many great songs did you actually hear at the top of the charts in 2009?  For the life of me, I can’t remember one.  Can you?  If you can, please send it to me.  I’m interested.

The better the musician, the better the music.  The better the education, the better the composer.  I’m not talking about college education here; I’m talking about years of experience learning your craft.  I’m talking about studying the music that went on before you.  There are many young musicians out there today that don’t even know the history of Rock n’ Roll much less the history of Jazz or Swing or Classical, for that matter.  What physicist would not study the works of Planck, Bohrs and Einstein?  How could you call yourself a physicist and not know of these giants’ works?  How can you call yourself a composer and not know the work of Duke Ellington or Igor Stravinsky or Pete Townsend, for that matter?

It was Stravinsky who said that he could not have changed the face of music the way he did without first knowing all of classical music that went on before him.  In order to break the traditions, you have to know the traditions.  Otherwise, you’re just throwing feathers to the wind.

Lyricists, learn your craft.  Study the masters.  Musicians, learn your instruments.  Study the masters.  Study music, for God’s sake!  Composers, learn music.  Just because you can play 3 chords on a guitar doesn’t make you a composer.  That takes years of study and deep consideration of the power and depth of music.  Again, study the masters.  Singers, study!  Go to a voice teacher and learn your instrument.  Learn how to control your vibrato so that you can sing a straight tone or a wide vibrato or a narrow one or even a straight tone emerging into a vibrato.  Learn pitch, again, for God’s sake.  Sing on pitch.

We’ve now given you a machine that corrects your pitch as you sing.  A sad state of affairs, but make no bones about it, while it’s working hard to digitally manipulate the sonic zeros and ones, it is, in fact, leaving your soul behind in the dust.  The “Cher effect” is laughed at today because though it does put the singer on pitch, it steals ones humanity and robotizes the performance.  Wouldn’t it simply be better to first learn to sing?

OK, enough.  This is supposed to be an inspirational blog…

But, I guess, sometimes in order to inspire, one must first identify the problem.  At this time in history, the state of the art in the music business is in a state.

Even More Inspiration

• The Decline of Lyrical Craftsmanship – Part 1
• Wonderful
• Even Now
• Watchfire Music Learning Lab
• 1/1/11
• Through An Open Door

Ira Gershwin

In the music industry, when the royalty split is determined for songwriters, the industry standard for royalties is that the composer gets 50% and the lyricist gets the other 50%.  Each contributor to the song shares equally.  But when it comes to publicity, notoriety, and public appreciation, that’s where the equality stops.  The composer always gets the lion’s share of the attention.

And so to right this inequality, to re-balance the appreciation for these underappreciated wordsmiths, I’ve decided to create just what this world needs most – another awards show – The Ira Awards, presented by Watchfire Music.  Also I’ve decided to name it after the most underappreciated lyricist of them all – Ira Gershwin.

Over the next couple of nights I’ll be giving out Iras to many of the world’s greatest lyricists and discussing why we’ve voted for them.  Our panel of judges (consisting of me, myself and I) have been collecting and reviewing examples of the world’s greatest lyrics for the past 30 years now and the ballots are now tabulated, the voting is in and it’s time to give out them golden statues.

To right our first wrong, let’s first establish the derivation of our title.  Ira Gershwin wrote lyrics for his much more famous brother, George for many years.  When people say, “Ah, that’s a Gershwin song” let’s face it, they’re not thinking “Gershwin Brothers”, they’re thinking “George”.  How did Ira get left out?  I have no idea.  It’s an injustice that I hope to resolve.

The man who only lives for making money

Lives a life that isn’t necessarily sunny;

Likewise the man who works for fame –

There’s no guarantee that time won’t erase his name

The fact is

The only work that really brings enjoyment

Is the kind that is for girl and boy meant.

Fall in love — you won’t regret it.

That’s the best work of all — if you can get it.

Holding hands at midnight

‘Neath a starry sky…

Oh that is nice work if you can get it.

And you can get it — if you try.

Strolling with the one girl

Sighing sigh after sigh…

Oh nice work if you can get it.

And you can get it — if you try.

Just imagine someone

Waiting at the cottage door.

Where two hearts become one…

Who could ask for anything more?

Loving one who loves you,

And then taking that vow…

Nice work if you can get it,

And if you get it –

Won’t you tell me how?

Lyrics: Ira Gershwin

In my classes on lyric writing I always lead off with this: “A poem doth not a lyric make.”  I always get the same reaction,  “Wha?”

What it means is this.  The major difference between poems and lyrics is that with a poem, the reader can stop in time and investigate a turn of phrase or a deeper thought.  With lyrics, there ain’t no stoppin’.  The music prohibits that.  So lyrics have to be simpler, more straightforward.  There can be poetry in a lyric, but it can’t be so dense that the listener cannot follow.

In the above lyric, Ira gets my award for best simple story telling done economically.  Here’s another of his gems.

Embrace me, my sweet embraceable you

Embrace me, you irreplaceable you

Just one look at you my heart grew tipsy in me

You and you alone bring out the gypsy in me

I love all the many charms about you

Above all I want my arms about

Don’t be a naughty baby…

Come to papa come to papa do

My sweet embraceable you…

Again, Lyrics: Ira Gershwin.  Google just about any George Gershwin song and often it gives George the lyric credit and leaves poor Ira out, but the fact is that Ira wrote the lyrics and George, the music.

Paul Simon, another great lyricist from another age tells a good story as well.  He certainly is poetic and his lyrics more obtuse, but in the following lyric Paul gets my vote for painting a picture that sets a mood and tells a story that has so many blanks that we, the listeners, get to fill in the blanks with our own imaginations.  Call it, the award for gorgeous impressionism.

Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together

I’ve got some real estate here in my bag

So we bought a pack of cigarettes, and Mrs. Wagner pies

And we walked off to look for America

Cathy, I said, as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburg

Michigan seems like a dream to me now

It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw

And I’ve come to look for America

Laughin’ on the bus, playing games with the faces

She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy

I said be careful, his bowtie is really a camera

Toss me a cigarette, I think there’s one in my raincoat

We smoked the last one an hour ago

So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine

And the moon rose over an open field

Cathy, I’m lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping

I’m empty and I’m aching and I don’t know why

Countin’ the cars on the New Jersey turnpike

They’ve all come to look for America, all come to look for America

Now here’s another guy who is among my top 5 favorite lyricists.  Alan Lerner was one of the few lyricists who were probably better known than his composer, Fritz Lowe.  Alan wrote Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, Camelot and a few others of similar magnitude.  Here’s one of my favorite Lerner lyrics.  From Brigadoon.

This is hard to say, but as I wandered through the lea,

I felt for just a fleeting moment that I suddenly was free of being lonely.

Then I closed my eyes and saw the very reason why.

I saw a man with his head bowed low.

His heart had no place to go.

I looked and I thought to myself with a sigh:

There but for you go I.

I saw a man walking by the sea,

Alone with the tide was he.

I looked and I thought as I watched him go by:

There but for you go I.

Lonely men around me, trying not to cry,

Till the day you found me, there among them was I.

I saw a man who had never known a love that was all his own.

I thought as I thanked all the stars in the sky:

There, but for you, go I.

Beautifully crafted, intelligently written, simple, and yet deep.  Kudos goes to Fritz Lowe also for a gorgeous melody.

But for me the all-time love song lyric, the winner of this lifetime’s Ira award, has to go to Alan Lerner for our next winner.

If ever I would leave you

It wouldn’t be in summer.

Seeing you in summer I never would go.

Your hair streaked with sunlight,

Your lips red as flame,

Your face with a luster

That puts gold to shame!

But if I’d ever leave you,

It couldn’t be in autumn.

How I’d leave in autumn I never will know.

I’ve seen how you sparkle

When fall nips the air.

I know you in autumn

And I must be there.

And could I leave you

Running merrily through the snow?

Or on a wintry evening

When you catch the fire’s glow?

If ever I would leave you,

How could it be in springtime?

Knowing how in spring I’m bewitched by you so?

Oh, no! Not in spring-time!

Summer, winter or fall!

No, never could I leave you at all!

Stay tuned for the next couple of nights as we romp through the great lyrics of the American songbook.  If you’re a bit of a lyricist, you won’t want to miss this.  If you’re just a person who loves a great song, you’re in for a treat.

Even More Inspiration

• Even Now
• Grieving In Silence
• Kickstarter.com Campaign – I
• Gettin’ It Done
• The Road To Inspiration — Peter Link and Julia Wade
• The Ira Awards Part 5