Sometimes songwriters and singers forget that. They get a melody in their head and the notes will take precedence, so that they wind up forcing a word onto a melody. It doesn't ring true.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When you write a song you have an idea of how it should be sung but it doesn't work out that way if someone else records it.
A song is a lot of things. But, first of all, a song is the voice of its time. Setting words to music gives them weight, makes then somehow easier to say, and it helps them to be remembered.
But when you get to a song, not only do you have to do a vocal melody, you have to write words and not be redundant and make some semblance of a story.
Popular music usually has a chorus that needs to repeat, and people need to remember the song. That's sort of the major guideline when you're writing a song.
I think in most cases, when you're writing a song, you're just making up a little story, and you're not really thinking about making a point one way or another about it. You're just coming up with a little scenario and seeing it through, and that's it.
All we do as songwriters is rewrite the songs that have impressed us till we find our own voice. It's part of learning the craft.
When poetry separates from song, then the words have to carry all the rhythm themselves; they have to do all the work. They can't rely on the singing voice.
For me, songwriting starts with a melody. When a musician plays a chord progression, either the words and vocal melody come to me, or they don't. That's how I determine who to write with. It works, or it doesn't.
Every writer writes in different ways, and so some write the music first, while others write the lyrics first, and some write while they are doing other things, and it is just nice to see how other writers are writing.
Traditionally, songwriters can't sing. And that holds true in my case, also.