Category: Artists

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500 words or less: Five Favourite Lyrics

What are your favourite lyrics?

Now, despite loving singing and songs, and as well as having a near photographic memory, I do find it difficult to pick apart lyrics for an entire song in a first listen – finding favourite lyrics can be tough. So when a lyric really sticks in my mind on first listen I KNOW I’ve got something I want to listen to again and again.

“Yes I know the name, sounds a little bit familiar, like a melody to a dream,
Yes I know, he wore the same face the same clothes, but that was so long ago”
‘Ghosts’ – Chris Cornell

This one (today) is one of my favourite lyrics because I felt it ‘revealed’ the nature of the whole song in a single phrase (the bridge). I felt it summed up what I felt the whole vibe of the song was about… the idea that someone is looking for a person they knew, but that person has left their old life behind and ‘isn’t there anymore’. Beautiful concept and wonderfully captured in song.

“Gentleness, sobriety, so rare in this society, at night a candle’s brighter than the sun”
‘Englishman in New York’ – Sting

Ah another set of favourite lyrics. I like this one because for the longest time I didn’t understand the link between the first half of the line and the second half. Then it dawned on me that (at least in my interpretation) that it was meant to convey the idea that being something rare stands out like a sore thumb. Nice combination of literal and metaphorical in the same line as well… a real eye/ear-opener for me.

“You can’t trust freedom when it’s not in your hand, when everybody’s fighting for the promised land”
‘Civil War’ – Guns N’ Roses

I don’t know what it is about this line that I love, I think it’s the raw visceral energy of the line… coupled with the strong rhyme between ‘hand’ and ‘land’. It just resolves perfectly, both musically and lyrically… yea… it’s a great song!

“You never thought you’d be alone, this far down the line, I know what’s been on your mind… you’re afraid it’s all been wasted time”
‘Wasted Time’ – The Eagles

This is another one that just transcended words for me, I felt it captured a moment into the life of a person (or both people) coming out of a broken relationship. The idea that the time spent on that relationship is lost, dead, wasted time. But the song wraps around on itself by the end and says ‘y’kno what, maybe it hasn’t all been wasted time’. And I like that ‘turnaround’ aspect… a lot!

“But is the best you can be, the best thing to be”
‘Crossroads’ – The Offspring

Great songwriters. I just love the play on words. Is the best you can be, really the best thing to be? I stopped paying attention to the song at that point because I was just totally lost in the world of that one lyric. Wonderful stuff.

There we have it, my favourite five lyrics. Why not share yours below?

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Adam Pascal – Pity The Child

Another great youtube video. This guy’s name is Adam Pascal, and you may recognise him from the movie ‘School of Rock’. He was the bassist of the band that fired Jack Black’s character. He is an excellent all-round vocalist and singer.

The top notes if I recall correctly are around C#5/D5, and the run up into them is tough, but very melodic.

Key Learning Point

I’ll be honest, as impressive as this sounds, it gets a bit shouty. It’s not the widest I’ve ever heard someone sing and by jove he’s doing something incredibly difficult… but does it sound good? If we stuck it down a minor third, I reckon he’d FEEL a lot better whilst singing, and it’d SOUND a lot better.

It doesn’t lack quality, but there is an easy way to MASSIVELY bump up the already existent quality in his voice. If he can make it sound that good in THAT key, how much better would it sound when he’s not working for EVERY note?

I know we harp on about that, but quality matters. It’s what makes the difference between great singers and “merely good” singers. It’s ALSO what makes the difference between singers who last 5 years and the ones who last 50 years.

Remember, put quality first and the rest will follow.

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This is the Moment

Another quick post on some Youtube gold. This one is a rendition of a piece from the musical Jekyll and Hyde – ‘This is the Moment – performed beautifully by Joseph Mahowald. Check it out. The ending makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Beautiful.

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Steve Balsamo

This is Steve Balsamo’s performance of ‘Gethsemane’ from Jesus Christ Superstar, and he does the mentalness of Ted Neeley’s original performance from the Jesus Christ Superstar film decades ago. I’d recommend watching the whole thing, but if you want to skip straight to the mentalness, shoot to 2m44s and you’ll get about 20 seconds run up into his prowess in full swing.

No, that is not falsetto, it’s head voice. You can hear he hits ‘that note’, then riffs (i.e. does some other notes in a musically cool and funky way) down back into chest voice in a fully connected way – if all the notes sound tonally even and connected together with no real tonal shift then it’s not falsetto.

But if you listen a little bit longer, as he’s ascending back up again, you can hear a noticeable shift into head voice. It’s still very impressive, but note that the illusion of one voice is damaged.

Learning points:

#1 – Half the range, twice the quality – While this is incredibly impressive, when you sit back and think objectively about the overall tone of his voice throughout, you can hear he is having to be incredibly light throughout in order to make sure he’s able to “get up there”. This means that although the high notes sound impressive, he’s compromised the whole of his vocal tone the rest of the song to get up there.

A phrase that is important to remember is that when it comes to longlasting voices, longlasting careers, and an audience that never gets tired of your voice, is to half the range to give twice the quality. So what if you hit crazy high notes, if your quality is compromised to do that, what was the point?

#2 – Technique does not equal listenability or success – This guy has done some incredible stuff here. But how many of you know his name? What about Michael Buble? Or Ed Sheeran? Almost all of you have heard their names. Their voices are lovely, but nowhere near as technical. What they are doing is almost pedestrian in comparison. Yet they fill stadiums and have millions of fans as well as critical commercial success. What gives? Music is not a competition. How much you can do with your voice is not as important as what choose to do with it. Being listenable is far more important than showing off a billion notes a second.

Now while this seems very similar to half the range, twice the quality, this is to point out that the real test you should always be sitting is “are you sounding good?”. Not “are you sounding impressive”. Impressive technique does exactly that for the first few seconds – it impresses. But what happens after that? Very few know about Steve Balsamo, yet Buble is a household name.

Make your first priority being listenable, and the rest will follow. Trust me on this.

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Bruno Mars

Great artist, great tune, great performance.

Bruno (real name Peter Gene Hernandez) has only had one album to date, entitled ‘Doo Wops and Hooligans’ released in late 2010, but it’s pretty epic as a first offering. He’s currently getting a new album recorded and I plan on picking it up as soon as it’s out.

Reggae?
His debut album features a variety of tunes all with reasonably different styles, but all have a distinctive Hawaiian/reggae backdrop… you might think I’m making that up, but if you listen closely it’s a common theme running through almost every track and this is even admitted by Bruno himself in a few interviews, citing growing up in Hawaii as a major influence in his lifestyle and writing.

Here’s a thing or three…
Focusing on a few of the tracks:
– ‘Just the way you are’ – This has arguably been the most successful song from the album. It’s a feel-good anthem played at weddings across the world in the last few years. The melody on the chorus is really simple, memorable, and the last line is a good ‘hook’ that really sticks in your mind. I like it anyway!
– ‘The Other Side’ – The amazing Cee-Lo Green features in this track (Cee-Lo will be featured in a later blog post) and it is a stonkingly cool track. Artistically, I like the way the lyrics say very little, but you paint a whole world in your mind. Technically, the melody of the chorus is stupendous, as it 100% out of chest voice… not a single note in chest voice, and it goes a good octave about chest voice too. But you’d never know, Bruno just makes it sounds as effortless as he was telling you about it… amazing.
– ‘Runaway Baby’ – The song linked to above is the song that sold me on Bruno Mars and made me buy his album. I’d heard ‘The Lazy Song’ which I really don’t like (sorry!) and that turned me off, but then I heard this and saw this performance and it made me want to hear more of this guy. Great thing about this is how catchy the riff is, and how simple the melody is, but the rhythms are infectious. Love it.

And I’ll leave you with…
The best thing about Bruno (I feel) is how he marries technical ability with songwriting ability and has brought that out into the market relatively late in his life. He was in his mid-20s before he started to make waves across the world, which is late by some standards, but had been a successful songwriter in his own right for other artists. I think that is very encouraging for those who harbour desires of a musical career but think that because they are not 18 anymore then they can’t make it. Bruno stands apart and shows that this isn’t true. His technical ability is amazing, but he uses that to great effect to serve the songs he rights, which are immensely catchy in their own right.

In short, Bruno rocks, have a listen. The songs might seem impossible to some, but with the right guidance they are totally achievable. Also, let me know if there are any other artists you’d like me to look at.