JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Songwriter Message Forum What is the reality behind selling lyrics in Nashville?

For the record, I wrote "If You Could" in about 10 minutes...lyrics and melody. It was straight from the heart. The "martian radio station" in my head came on, out of nowhere, and I scrambled for a pen and paper as the song flooded through me. I kept singing it to myself all the way home until I could get to my guitar and work out the chords. Most lyrics I write are easy to me, because I write strictly from the heart and real-life experiences. Even when I cowrote with Travis, and it took us two months to agree on the final lyric, I didn't spend that much time on it. I applied a time of my life to the song, and from my heart came words.

Writing a GOOD melody is a whole 'nother ball game. VERY difficult, even for prodigies. People can write melodies all day long, but are they GOOD? Are they catchy and memorable? THAT'S what people remember, that's what sticks in their heads. Good lyrics are important, but as we all know, there are songs (like "Billy Don't Be a Hero") that made it that suck scissors as far as lyrics, but the melody was catchy enough to stick in people's heads.

Even having said that, fine, the lyricist and the melody writer get 50/50. Agreed.

Then there is the business of MUSICATING the song, SINGING the song, PRODUCING the song, MIXING the song, and DELIVERING the final product. I don't know any lyricists personally who are involved in this process. Again, Haze is probably a unique situation, but his involvement in those aspects of the song are worth EVERY PENNY of the $150, because he usually gets upwards of $400 (or at least he did in Nashville when he wasn't touring).

Roy made a good point. Helen wrote some clever lyrics, but HAZE was able to interpret them in a way that turned them into a catchy tune. Yes, I sang it, but Haze told me what to sing. BTW, I don't ask for cowrite on ANYTHING! I strictly AM a work-for-hire. I just go in and do what Haze tells me to. I trust that he knows what he's doing, and I give him what he wants. BTW, imagine that song without the acoustic bass Haze added, free of charge. It would be COMPLETELY different! He knew it needed that to drive it, so he put the extra time in adding that. That's how he works on EVERY song.

Bill, you're talking apples and oranges here. You hired guys to play parts on a song that already had a lyric, melody, and structure. All they had to do was come up with a guitar part, etc. That's TOTALLY DIFFERENT than having to take some words and build a song around that, and then be paid $150 with no future royalties.

Since I've been doing demos, I've noticed how unfair it is to the musicians who have to make payments on $100,000 of equipment, spend HOURS playing on and tweaking the music, mixing it down, and sending it off. They end up making less than $1 an hour. And no further residuals. It's not worth a talented musician's time. And too, there's the quality factor...Joe Blow who tinkers with it compared to someone who's actually a professional musician. Payless shoes versus Prada. Both of 'em will cover your feet, but one will just barely do the job, the other will show your feet off and last a lot longer because they're better built.

That's all the more I have to say on the matter. There seem to be two camps here; one that believes writing words is just as equally difficult as writing a melody, playing instruments, firing up a studio, investing in the equipment, recording, mixing, and delivering a final product, and another that believes writing words in no way compares to the rest of the huge amount of work that goes into making A SONG.

Someone said "Write your lyrics with a melody in mind." Make sure it's a good one, is all I can say. I've heard some piss poor melodies that had to be redone too, i.e., the melody literally had to be rewritten making it again, COWRITE territory. I said it before and I'll say it again, if this is the way the music industry operates, it's very unfair and needs to be changed!