What makes a great lyric? Cerys Matthews & Guy Garvey look closer

16 March 2018

6 Music is examining and saluting the verses and choruses that go alongside our favourite music.

Cerys Matthews and Guy Garvey, whose latest 6 Music shows are a celebration of Lyrics, know more than a thing or two about crafting and shaping words of their own. So they’ve shared with us a few thoughts about what’s behind the lyrics they like the most. Meanwhile Shaun Keaveny also offers his own, unique view of what makes a great lyric via his inaugural "VLOG"...

Cerys Matthews: Dylan Thomas said: "The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it." And you can say the same for a song lyric.

Lyrics can change your perception of the world
Cerys Matthews

They stay with you. They can change your perception of the world. They can enhance your perception or merely make the passage of time more enjoyable.

A great and surprising turn of phrase will always have value, as can a lyric which says much but with few words.

In fact, in Welsh – and many other languages – one word covers both song and lyrics: Cerdd.

Also, in many cultures poetry first emerged accompanied with music.

With both, there are some real humdingers... but with song lyrics there are more places to hide.

Guy Garvey: I’ve been writing lyrics since I was very young. The first thing I ever wrote was I rewrote the lyrics to We Built This City On Rock’n’Roll as We Built This City On Jam Swiss Roll – terrible! – but that’s the first thing I remember doing.

What makes a great lyric for me? They can be really complex or they can fit with the music... and everywhere in between
Guy Garvey

Then I started writing poems about my classmates in limerick form. All I remember is one about a girl called Julie who was in my primary school class. I just remember the first line was: "Julie is a jewel wrapped up in a chain..." so you can see I had a propensity for the dramatic even when I was ten.

I’ve been writing lyrics since then. What makes a great lyric for me? They can be really complex or they can fit with the music... and everywhere in between. Here are a few of my favourites...

One I always refer to is a Talk Talk B-side which is a tough little piece of music called It’s Getting Late In The Evening. The lyric is "everybody’s laughing". You don’t get more economical than that, but it’s the different inflections that Mark Hollis puts on the lyric that make it so powerful. When he starts it, it’s full of hope – you imagine maybe a kid surrounded by family; then it’s not so sure; then bolder and more confident; then it’s sung slower... and suddenly someone is being laughed at. That’s a really simple, but great lyric.

Michael Stipe is great at suggesting atmosphere with simple terms. In R.E.M.'s You Are The Everything he sings: “voices talking somewhere in the house, late spring” and that’s just beautiful. Everybody’s memories of childhood have that murmur of people talking next door and the comfort that brings. Yet without the “late spring” it could be something ominous, but with that you realise it’s a comforting image.

Tom Waits is a lyricist of a different kind and l love his crazy fantasy stuff
Guy Garvey

With the song Cold Blue Steel And Sweet Fire, Joni Mitchell – who I think is probably my favourite lyricist – sings about heroin addiction and the desperation of someone trying to get a fix so evocatively: "Pawnshops criss-crossed and padlocked". I mean that’s great to sing but it’s also a desperate image of someone trying to get money to score. It’s really powerful stuff.

Tom Waits is a lyricist of a different kind and l love his crazy fantasy stuff. You can really look deep at his things and realise that he puts his phrases together like Raymond Chandler – this very sexy street poetry, very cool gunslinger-y, private detective-y as 16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought-Six attests.

“Plugged sixteen shells from a thirty-ought six/ And a black crow snuck through a hole in the sky/ And I spent all my buttons on an old pack mule/ And I made me a ladder from a pawn shop marimba. I leaned it all up against a dandelion tree...”

Suddenly he’s tiny, he’s like a little sprite. And then he goes on to say in the chorus: "I’m going to whittle you into kindlin', Black Crow/ 16 shells from a thirty-ought-six/ whittle you into kindlin'…" which is my favourite bit. The way he sings it is so threatening! It’s just so fantastic, that, it’s brilliant!

He has these fantastic fantasy adventures so he can be everything from a travelling Victorian hobo, to someone trying to make it in New York in the Frank’s Wild Years era, to a soldier who has come back from the war. He has these characters but shreds of his life come through from the way he puts it all together.

As for now, my favourite lyricists of the moment are alt-J, they manage to set scenes without specifically telling stories, they just give you a sense of something. It’s just really extraordinary stuff. So they’re my current favourites, along with Laura Marling and Everything Everything. The latter create real adventures with their lyrics, and if you like words then you’ll like a lot of them!

Although equally if it’s economy of words you’re after, I’ll always point to Sunshine On Leith by The Proclaimers. It’s so simple but it doesn’t take away from how heartfelt it is. It’s amazing folk music in that regard.