The writing process

I’ve been writing music and lyrics since I was in my teens. I’ve still got all my old lyrics lying around. These lyrics aren’t very good, and reflect my age and vocabulary at the time. But when I look through them, I might find a clever line, recall a melody, recall a feeling or something else that helps me write a better lyric today.

One of the songs from yesterday’s small recording session is the result of working like this. I found this really crappy lyric that reeks of immaturity. Back then I thought I was provocative, today it just seems infantile. But the riff and the melody was playing in my head while I shamefully read the plump, juvenile lyrics. This song was never recorded in any way, I just wrote it and put it in the box for later. Where it stayed until now.

When a melody is strong enough to survive 29 years in oblivion, I believe there’s something to it, and decided to rewrite it.

The lyric part was pretty easy on this one. I sat down, wrote a draft for the first few lines based on the rhythmicality of the melody, opened a tab with my trusted “writing partner”, rhymezone.com, and started writing – not knowing what would come out of it. Half an hour later, it was ready. It’s not the longest lyric, but it on point – and a LOT better that the infantile crap I wrote back in the day…