Some people start with the lyrics first because they know what they want to talk about and they just write a whole bunch of lyrical ideas, but for me the music tells me what to talk about.
My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.
I'm writing a musical. I am. I was able to buy the rights to 'The Preacher's Wife,' which starred Whitney Houston... I'm writing a whole new score and all the lyrics for it.
I write lyrics based on music, on a musical flow, and what sounds good at the time.
Usually when I write a song, I'll write the music and then kind of fit some words to it.
I was asked by this British band called Kairos 4Tet to write lyrics for them. And I wrote lyrics for them. The album is called 'Everything We Hold,' and you can hear my lyrics.
You have to write a song around this specific character or to enhance a specific scene. A lot of other craft goes on.
I tend to start with a full set of lyrics, and then my producer, Joel Little, and I work on the music collaboratively.
That's pretty much how every song of mine works - I start with gibberish and melody and phrasing. I speak it naturally first. And then I think about lyrics that fit into that.
I actually find a lot of pleasure in writing lyrics.
I create my own lyrics. I have a great band. I have a drummer from East Berlin.
So what comes naturally to me is writing lyrics and writing songs and telling stories.
I've always thought of music as something which gives the words their flight and their wings and the music often comes first, although sometimes I'll have a concept, a title idea, a lyric idea that I want to write and the lyric will come first.
Sometimes my lyrics may describe a situation that happened to a friend. Other times, I create a story from the ground up.
I don't write lyrics. I hear the track and sing in gibberish over it, then I try and fit words into the phrasing and melody that I already have set. Everything is left to chance.
The songs started as a soundscapes, and then came the words and music; each song took at least a year to make.
So one can say that I write all the time, that goes for the lyrics as well.
I just make up lyrics off the top of my head. A lot of times, there's a phrase I really like, and I kind of build the song around that.
I pretty much started the lyrics and I hit a roadblock and I think Kerry finished them up. Then I came back and did the ending part. The whole 'Raining Blood.' That part. But it pretty much came together easy. It's a short song.
Sometimes song happens all at once where you sit down and the lyrics and the music just come out. So there definitely isn't one way that it happens - there are a lot of different things that take place.
