Many people share in the sentiment that when you’re particularly good at something, you not only enjoy doing it, but enjoy showing off your skills. Lyric writing is no different. Writing an extremely clever or crafty line provides a feeling of great joy, as well as an ego boost, so placing that line within a song is an absolute must. Except when it isn’t.
Musical theatre lyric writing is an extremely niche world when compared to other genres of music. The songs are written for extremely unique characters, moments, and situations. This contrasts most every other genre of music- pop, rock, country- where songs tend to exist off of emotions, situations, and sentiments that the songwriter has undergone or are shared throughout society and history. In both cases, the songwriter writes lyrics that are meant to impact audiences and invoke a certain emotion, or through personal thoughts, emotions, or details. The songwriter is writing lyrics for themselves, or for an audience to resonate with. The songwriter is not a mouthpiece for someone else’s internal monologue or emotions- that’s where musical theatre differs.
Music within theatre is almost universally seen as the moment in which the characters’ emotions are “too great for words”, or the “lyric moment”, so we convey them through song. Songs are a conduit of plot, as well as emotion, but one lyrical convention they share is the lyricist being used as the character’s mouthpiece. The story we are attempting to tell is not ours, but the character’s. The emotions we are attempting to convey are not ours, but the character’s. Just as an audience member would, we as writers may easily resonate with the stories and emotions of the characters, and some argue that such a connection makes the work “stronger”, but the story and emotions are not our own.
There are many areas where lyricists get in the way of the characters when writing. These areas include: the character’s motivations, the vernacular of the character, and the personality of the character. I’ll be exploring these three big areas by providing excellent examples and extremely poor examples (including my own works). These areas will all be explored in subsequent blog posts. I’ll be challenging my own understanding of musical theatre lyric writing, as well as your own, I hope.
John Claudy 