Have you ever listened to rock lyrics? I mean REALLY
listened to them. Yeah. Most are pretty bad. Don’t get me wrong. The music is
awesome. It’s almost as if the lyrics are a second thought. Of course this is a
generalization. Not ALL rock lyrics are horrendous. Just a lot of them are
pointless. My opinion. And don’t get me started on some of the intensely heavy
metal songs. If you can call them songs. Again, I love metal (not the growling
songs) and I adore hard rock.
For years I’ve been writing and rewriting lyrics for several
hard rock musicians in Italy. It’s a triple process. One musician has finally
relented and lets me “create” the lyrics. Some of the others just want their
“grammar” corrected.
Triple process= Italian dictionary + American rhyming
dictionary + thesaurus. The difficulty lies in the translation. Italian DOES
not translate the way we want it to. For that matter neither do most languages.
So it comes down to reworking and re translating.
The lyrics I correct are fairly simple and not terribly
sophisticated. I tweak them to make them work. Songs about love, heartache,
passion blah, blah, blah. It’s rock. It’s blues. Great stuff.
The lyrics I write are not simple and very sophisticated. After
finishing a song, my favorite rock musician said…ok Ellen…now you have to
explain it to me! I love that. To the American ear, the song makes all the
sense in the world. To the Italian ear, it needs a serious translation and
analysis. It means I’ve done my job well!
Two of my favorite songwriters are Bob Dylan and Leonard
Cohen. Yes, they both have vocals that sound like sandpaper on gravel. But to
me, their lyrics are pure magic. And their music is wonderful. Another amazing
band is Pink Floyd. The lyrics are so weird and wonderful. But of course I love
them. After all, I sing in a prog rock band!
So turn on the radio. Listen to lyrics. But don’t think too
hard. Just enjoy!
Happy Monday all! ROCK ON!!!
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