#This sentence would be incredibly sweet in absolutely every context - even in Succession

[platypotoo]

"I haven't seen you smile in, like, six hours!"

[kaitkerrigan]

SAY THE WORD - Writing New Lyrics to Old Songs and Writing Music First

You would think this would be a romantic episode of “Behind the Lyrics” but no, this is a funny one, a technical one. But before we get to that, let’s tarry for a little while on the melody of “Say the Word”, which is really the star. 

Some songs start with a chorus or a stanza or a lyric. Some start with a hook - a title - a phrase that defines the whole song. A hook isn’t just the lyric. It can be, but generally it’s more than that. It’s a small packet of emotional information: words and music that are the keystone to the rest of the song. 

We had that: “Say the word.” And then Brian sent me music - verse music and chorus music. I think the bridge came later. Listen: 

http://kaitandbrian.bandcamp.com/track/say-the-word-instrumental

Wait, no, don’t skip this part. Listen:    

http://kaitandbrian.bandcamp.com/track/say-the-word-instrumental

It’s important that you listen to it without lyrics, that you don’t know what the lyrics might become for a moment, because that’s what I experienced when I first listened to this melody, the melodic shift to “say the word” from the verse. I remember crying the first time I heard it. 

I’m no sap. That doesn’t happen often - especially not before we have worked out the whole song - but it happened here. And I must say, I was intimidated by it. This was one of the first songs I was writing lyrics for in The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown. I was still a freshman lyricist. I hardly knew what I was doing. I couldn’t really write lyric first. I needed the structure of the music to contain me. I still prefer writing music first.   

But this music intimidated me. It was good and more than that, it was spare. I struggled. I tried to find something that worked but I couldn’t work out the grammar. Did you know that a lot of lyric writing is about grammar? It’s about knowing what kind of sentence you can write. It’s about whether you’re writing a question, or using a string of participles. I was a born grammarian. It’s been an asset. 

Finally, Brian and I decided we’d write a dummy lyric to it together. This is something we’ve often done, but rarely so exactly. I often follow the grammar we find in a dummy lyric. Sometimes Brian will write a lyric along with his music and I’ll replace every word but the grammatical contours will remain. Why? Because sung music implies grammar, especially sentence breaks. Following that phrasing in your lyric often makes you make more interesting and beautiful choices.   

I’m stalling. Can you tell? I don’t want you to read our dummy lyric (because of course I remember it. It was good enough that I remember it). Can I just say that the grammar of my real lyric follows the contours of our dummy lyric exactly? I’ll give you one more hint. The dummy lyric is supremely on the nose. Sam wants to have sex with her boyfriend. She’s been having difficulty blurting that out. In our dummy lyric, she really blurted that out. Nothing coy about it.   

I can’t tell you the dummy lyric because if I write it here you will ever unsee it and you will never have the pure sweet love for this song that you have now. I’m sparing you. Have I said too much? I’ve said too much. 

None of this was the question I was asked by @AmeliaBell28 on Twitter. She asked why we changed the lyric from “loving you should be easier” to “let me go if it’s easier” and I’m so glad she did.   

“Loving you should be easier” always sat with me wrong. 

Years ago, a very famous actor who was singing the song pointed out that it should be “loving me should be easier” and that stuck with me. That didn’t feel quite right but it felt more right than what I had written (as this sophomoric beginner’s-lucky lyricist). But it’s spare AF and the melody requires something concrete and broad at the top of the sentence. Most sentences start with “I” or “you” or “last night” or something like that. But I needed something like “loving you” or “Saturday” or “better days”. And I needed whatever I did to lead into “but say the word, and I might have to stay.”   

You’re me. Here’s what you’ve got.   

Say the word and I just might listen.  Say the word and you might get your way.  _ _ _,* _ _ _ _ _ but say the word,  And I might have to stay. 

(*comma added to indicate phrasing) 

This is literally what I stared at for weeks in the lead up to our workshop in the spring of 2016, cursing myself from a decade earlier for having squeezed myself into this box. I’m going to try to find another lyric for it right now as I write this and I’ll share the ways I narrowed down my options.   

I was scared but now - Doesn’t work because you can’t say “but” or anything that negates the 2nd half of the clause because it’s part of a larger clause. That rules out the 4th word being but, since, or; you’ll end up in a run on. 

All my life, I’ve been holding back but say the word, - Success! 

The grammar is good! “All my life” feels iconic enough for the music; it feels repeatable. Don’t forget how many times we’ll hear this exact lyric. But has she been holding back? Does that make any sense? Not really. Still, this is good grammar. It’s possible to understand what she’s talking about enough to know she’s not making sense, which is a positive development.   

So then I think to myself: I need some kind of island phrase that’s three syllables and that leads easily and truthfully to “but say the word”. Everything she’s been saying is a command - a sort of coy command, but command all the same. (You) say the word. I’m not going to say it.   

In lyrics, we talk a lot about parallel structure: 

Let me be your ride out of town.  Let me be the place that you hide. We can make our lives on the go.  Run away with me.   

There are two kinds of parallel structure in that lyric. The first (bolded) is the more obvious kind. It’s when you have two lines (or more) in a row that start with the same words. It can be incredibly effective. It follows the contours of what the music is doing (repetition of motif) and insists upon something. The second (italicized) is a bit more subtle but it does train your ear. Three out of four of those lines are not statement of fact but commands - something the character wants.

The same is true for “Say the Word” but she’s less insistent. She’s more seductive. I looked at the whole chorus: 

Say the word, and I just might listen. Say the word, and you might get your way. _ _ _,* _ _ _ _ _, but say the word, And I might have to stay. 

And the grammar is actually pretty complex. Compare it to

Let me be your ride out of town. [NEW THOUGHT] Let me be the place that you hide. [NEW THOUGHT] We can make our lives on the go. [NEW THOUGHT]  Run away with me. 

There’s an if/then proposal being made by Sam. Essentially, “if you say that you want me to be here with you, I might listen and give you what you want. [BLANK] but if you say what you want, I might stay here.” 

So that missing line takes on enormous import. It’s the thing that’s holding them back. My box got narrower and narrower. I liked the word “easier”, which fit so effortlessly on the music (it was part of our infamous dummy lyric even) and I became convinced that the complexity of the grammar meant that it would be easier to follow with a command at the top of that line. That left me with:  

Say the word, and I just might listen. Say the word, and you might get your way. COMMAND,* if it’s easier, but say the word, And I might have to stay. 

“Let me go” wasn’t the first idea that I had but it was the truest idea. There’s something poetic and simple about talking about either staying or going. It’s not about love. It’s about action. Do you want me to stay? Or do you want to let me go?   

I wish I could say that when I hit that lyric, I felt a sense of relief but I actually sweated out the workshop and the production. Brian didn’t say, “I like the new lyric” until we’d already started performances of The Mad Ones off-Broadway. Once we opened, a few other people came up to me and mentioned the new lyric. That’s actually nuts. It’s one line of an unproduced show. I knew I was right to be nervous. If I got it wrong, people would actually notice.   

I also knew from experience, that hearing a new lyric when you know an old one is jarring. I vividly remember hearing Ragtime in the theater after hearing only the concept album and being incensed by some of the changes. There was a different lyric written into the liner notes of Miss Saigon from the one on the recording for the now very dead “It’s Her or Me” / “Now That I’ve Seen Her” - two songs with the exact same melody and entirely non-overlapping lyrics. The same was true for portions of Beauty and the Beast. There’s several in Ragtime. These drove me absolutely crazy. My loyalty to the lyric I heard first knew no bounds. I never thought the second lyric was better. Now as a lyricist myself, I know that in general, they sing less well and make more sense. And often they’re the product of producer notes. 

Of course, I was in danger of the same error, the same failure to fans of the show, so I was shy about debuting this lyric change - small though it was - but I felt very strongly that I had to do it now before we might have a chance to record it or license it for posterity. So I tried to make sure that I wrote something truthful (yes) but also (I hope) just as fun to sing as “loving you”, which was always so weird. Why was loving him hard? Why should love be easier? What does that even mean???   

Does it make it better if I apologize to any of the purists among you? I see you. I hear you. I. Am. You. If Tony Kushner touches a hair on the head of Caroline, or Change, I will cut him. But “loving you should be easier” drove me nuts. I couldn’t let that baffling lyric live. I hope you will pardon me.   

For anyone who came to this post hoping that I had something profound to say about the in-show context, I’m sorry (more apologies). The context is simple. Sam wants to have sex with her boyfriend. She has a hard time talking about it. Finally, she drops trou’ and throws herself at him. He thinks that’s pretty weird. She concedes and finally opens up and sings this.*

*with one minor lyric change... :)