BMI Blog #3
26th September, 2023.
Been a big week! I’ve been entering the Broadway lottery like a fiend, but seeing the Back to the Future musical has slowed me down a bit. Maybe I don’t need to see every show.
We have a whole bloody month before we present our song! I don’t like this format! Musicals take years to write, and it helps lazy bastards like me justify slow writing! I need a deadline like that screaming eyepatch guy from Deer Hunter! We don’t need a month to write a chorus!
But with a class of 38 (19 composers and 19 lyricists), that’s how it’s gotta be. Each presentation gets feedback, so they only schedule in six teams per lesson, so it takes three weeks just to hear everyone’s presentation. I mean, we’ll learn from listening to the work and feedback of others, but I wish they had just opted for a smaller intake. The schedule is such that we’ll only get to work with about half the group before we have to choose a partner for second year. Dumb!
This week, Pat ran the class. The first thing he did was give us his Ten Commandments of Theatre Lyrics, which I’ll summarise here. “Thou Shalt: 1. Be Singable. 2. Be Understandable. 3. Be About One Thing Only. 4. Be Specific. 5. Write Dramatically. 6. Not Self Pity. 7. Scan Correctly. 8. Find Fresh Images. 9. Not False Rhyme or Transpose Words. 10. Not Be Rigid or Wordy.
Some explanation for the Commandments that need it:
Be Singable. Pat gave us the example of Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” and how Sondheim chose phrases like “isn’t it rich” to suit Glynis Johns’ singing style. The vowel sound and “ch” of “rich” make it more natural to be sung quickly without a sustained note, as this wasn’t Johns’ strong point. This is something I don’t consciously think about, and a clear area for improvement.
Write Dramatically: Abide by the three-act structure of a song (or at least end somewhere different to where you started). With a comedy song, make sure your best joke is your last joke, and get funnier as you go along. This one fucks me all the time, ‘cos inevitably you think of a funny joke that only works in the start or middle of the song and now everything’s gotta lift to top that. A good rule but a hard one.
Not Self Pity: I never really thought about this, but it makes sense. Audiences don’t feel sorry for characters that feel sorry for themselves. The only exception Pat gave us was in the case of comedy, provided the self-pity is funny. He gave the example of Tevye in Fiddler, who spends pretty much the whole show in self-pity, but he’s funny and endearing.
Scan Correctly. Amen! In fact, this should be number ONE. I am still triggered by all the shithouse parody lyrics I had to sing in university revues that scanned so poorly and mis-stressed so often that they had to put the lyrics up on a projector behind the performers, thus telegraphing every lame joke before it came out of our mouths. Scansion!
Use Fresh Images: Oscar Hammerstein is a great study in this. “Jumpy as a puppet on a string”, “...her long yeller hair falls across my face just like the rain in a storm”. It’s definitely a constant struggle for me to avoid being generic. It’s all about tapping into your individual voice. Another area for improvement.
Not False Rhyme or Transpose Words: The false rhyme goes without saying, but transposing words confused a few people. Pat gave the lyric of “Babes in Toyland” as an example, eg” “you must near me stay”. It’s unnatural, but I think, as with all of these rules, there are exceptions where breaking them is appropriate. There’s a very fine line between awkward, transposed words and a beautiful, poetic lyric. You don’t want to always be speaking naturalistically. Someone in the class pointed out “Baby Mine” from Dumbo as an example of these exceptions.
Bloody hell Sondheim was good. Every week in our booklet there’s a bunch of lyrics of classic songs, and without fail his are my favourite. Even just reading them aloud without music, they are beautiful. Last week it was “Cool”, and this week it’s “Not While I’m Around”. If that was my hook, I would probably start thinking of words that rhyme with “around”. Instead, Sondheim structures the rhyme to highlight “I’m”, which is the more important word in that lyric, in terms of what the character is saying. It’s a little boy puffing himself up and saying he'll protect Mrs Lovett.
RIP Steve. Oh, and I saw Josh Groban do Sweeney Todd this week and I’ve come around to “Parlour Songs”. Tune.