...And Of Course.

Selfishly ignoring my rabies-flecked post of a few days ago, the American public has gone and given Smash solid ratings for its pilot show, and believe it or not, I don't begrudge it that. Despite what I said here, the "Smash" pilot wasn't absolutely terrible, it was just mediocre. So why did I hate it? Because it seemed so bloody pleased with itself for being mediocre (though I am aware that in the humility sweepstakes, I live in what looks suspiciously like a glass house).

And, hey, if people enjoy the show, that's great. If it continues to pull good ratings, fantastic. Granted, it's going to be a very long few months for me, but with any luck by then the American public will have grown a sense of good taste.

Yeah...let me know when that happens. If you need me, I'll be on the floor in a fetal position.

Rant: 5 Reasons I Hated The Pilot For "Smash" With Every Fiber Of My Being

            To say that I haven’t been updating my blog lately is an understatement akin to saying that the Atlantic Ocean is vaguely moist. However, if anything was to break through my shell of real-world responsibilities and good old fashioned apathy, it would have to be another aborted attempt to bring musicals back to the small screen.

            Not that I have anything against the idea—in fact, my hope that a consistently good musical television show might finally become the next big thing springs, if not eternal, then at least for a few more years. Viva Laughlin, while noble in intent, stumbled in execution, and Cop Rock is such a legendary disaster that I almost feel bad beating it further into the ground.

         
             I said almost. Anyway, the only show to come close to fulfilling this dream in recent years was Glee, which had its moments but grew steadily more insufferable by the day until I stopped watching out of sheer frustration. Nevertheless, when I saw the announcement of NBC’s new series Smash, I was excited in spite of myself. Sure, it looked a little derivative, but if it was smartly written and well acted, I wouldn’t care.

            And then I watched the pilot, and my mood sank from hopeful to ambivalent to frustrated to genuinely furious.

I hate this episode, and I fully expect to hate the show just as much. It follows a group of people trying to produce a musical about Marilyn Monroe, as well as the struggles of two determined and vaguely desperate young ladies to secure the lead role, and if this plot sounds familiar it’s probably because you have seen a musical before. I don’t really expect anyone else to understand why I despise this show so entirely, but I will certainly try to convey the reasons for my resentment to the best of my ability.

Meaningless Metaphors, or Fantine's Tiger Problem

I understand; it's very hard to make every single line of a song meaningful and interesting. Only a few lyricists (like Cole Porter) could ever consistently manage it. I also don't mind metaphors and similes in lyrics, for they often serve a valuable purpose. That said, I frequently encounter lyrics in which metaphors and similes seem so fantastically pointless or out-of-place that one can only imagine that they were included as filler, a rickety bridge for moving the song from one idea to another.

To be sure, there are plenty of these to be found in flops, but (as is my wont) I prefer to use examples that everyone already knows. My first example is from Wicked, a musical that I do genuinely like. My affection for the show, however, does not extend to the chorus of "For Good." The song starts out strong, with a bittersweet reprise of the "Unlimited" interlude, and then an emotionally intimate moment in which two characters admit how much they mean to each other. And then the similes start.

Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun,
Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood.


The problem with these similes is not the content but the context. Metaphors and similes are only useful in lyrics when they are able to express an idea or emotion that could not be adequately conveyed through a more direct method. The previous verse had already established, in refreshingly personal terms, the central emotional kernel of the song. The idea of a seemingly unalterable course being interrupted is a powerful but uncomplicated one that requires no embellishment beyond simple, emotional truth. Pulling the idea back into broad generalizations and repetitive examples serves only to tell the listener that it's safe to tune out; "there's nothing to see here."

A very different form of problematic comparison comes from Les Miserables. Again, I feel obliged to provide some small disclaimer to the effect that I do actually like the show. In fact, on the whole I even like the lyrics. At any rate, they are far better than a glorified translation has any right to be. However, I have always had a bone to pick with one particular line from "I Dreamed A Dream." The song, of course, is a classic tragic ballad that tells its story with unflinching clarity and naked emotion. At least, it does until it comes to one particular line:

But the tigers come at night


Were tiger attacks a big enough problem in nineteenth century France that they would be the first thing to spring to the mind of an impoverished factory worker? Wolves, maybe, but tigers? The next line only digs itself in deeper:

With their voices soft as thunder...


A line which makes you wonder, if nothing else, whether the lyricist is thinking of the same natural phenomenon we're thinking of when he uses the word "thunder." Or maybe thunder is really soft and my hearing is just too sensitive.

Again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with metaphor and simile, just so long as they have a good reason for being there, as long as they mean something. I care about Elphaba and Glinda, I care about Fantine. What I decidedly do not care about are comets, streams, and confused French tigers. Why bring them up?

An Overview of Collaborative Coherency in the 20th Century

(The following is adapted from an essay I wrote on the subject of the development of collaborative coherency (and songwriting in general) throughout the twentieth century. Naturally, this will be far from comprehensive, but I hope that it will serve to illustrate some of the concepts that I believe lie at the heart of lyric-writing.)
              Often overlooked in the rush to praise instrumental music and poetry is the humble art form of songwriting. An institution probably as old as language itself, the practice of coordinating music and lyrics took great leaps and bounds in the 20th century, but in a manner rather different than those of its independent constituent parts. This is because of the inherently elaborate nature of the song. For many artists the relationship between music and lyrics is symbiotic, one of interplay rather than dominance of one over the other. Thus, not only should the rhythms of the music and the rhythms of speech in the lyrics match up, but the emphases in the music (be they of pitch, volume, duration, or what have you) should ideally correspond to similar points in the music. This form of coordination will be referred to from here on out as “collaborative coherency,” and understanding this concept and its development is essential to understanding the development of songwriting as a whole through the 20th Century; from the acceptable but inconsistent collaborative coherency of opera sprang a vast and disparate range of approaches, from Schoenberg’s rejection of collaborative coherency to Weill and Brecht’s refinement of it to a fascinating reconciliation of the two.
(Read the rest of the essay after the jump!)

Pet Peeves: Syllable Fillers

            When writing lyrics, you are forever bound rhythmically by the music, and therefore syllabically by the rhythms of that music. This is a heavy burden for any lyricist, but you must fervently resist the impulse to arbitrarily insert extra words into a sentence in order to fill your syllable quota. Too often have I seen the phrase “it’s only just a [noun]” inveigle its way into song lyrics. Let’s leave aside the fact that “only just,” with both words serving as adverbs, is not a phrase in the English language; far more relevant is the fact that it so clearly screams out what it is: a lazy way to inject extra syllables into a line with too few.

The Necessity of Rhyming, or What Does It Get Ya?

           Today I thought I might give a brief argument as to why perfect rhyming is essential in lyrics. Let’s think about musical dissonance for a moment; modern music is fully aware of dissonance, but is also smart enough to use it sparingly. The fully atonal composers saw dissonance as a style, rather than what it actually is: an effect. And any musical effect must be used intelligently and therefore intermittently if it is to maintain its efficacy over time. Thus, dissonance must be saved until the moment at which it will be most effective. At that point, it may be used with abandon.

As a rule, any kind of artistic effect is like bad language: it is deliciously startling if used rarely and disappointingly tepid if applied indiscriminately. So it is with the technique of temporarily abandoning rhyme. Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics for the magnificent “Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy demonstrate how best to apply this technique. Through most of the show, Sondheim’s lyrics had been conventional musical theater lyrics, but very clever and expertly rhymed. “Rose’s Turn” represents a drastic departure from that style, corresponding with Mama Rose’s mental deterioration:

Why did I do it?
What did it get me?
Scrapbooks full of me in the background.
Give 'em love and what does it get ya?
What does it get ya?
One quick look as each of 'em leaves you.
All your life and what does it get ya?
Thanks a lot and out with the garbage,
They take bows and you're battin' zero.

            Obviously it’s still rhythmic, but the rhyme schemes have completely collapsed, replaced by a stream of regrets and recriminations. It’s a brilliant moment, but imagine if the whole show was written like this; what would happen to this number’s emotional impact without its anarchic departure from the orderly lyrical structures that surround it?

            Doing away with rhyme is hardly taboo and can generate extraordinary dramatic effects, but only if used with moderation and a keen eye. Forcing yourself to rhyme is a wonderful thing; it crystallizes ideas, forces you to express emotions in ways that you might not have thought of, and abets both clarity and concision. Any of those alone would be worth playing for.

The Tony Awards 2011: A Thought or Two

            Last night’s Tonys were first-rate, if a tad predictable. Chris Rock, presenting the award for Best Musical, expressed what everyone in the room was thinking when he read out the inevitable winner, The Book of Mormon, in a sarcastic parody of shock. Everyone got it.

            The Tonys often serve as little more than a sad reminder of just how little originality the commercial musical theatre has to offer right now. More often than not, a show wins simply by virtue of not being terrible. In that way, despite the inevitability of Mormon taking home the top prize, it was a considerable comfort to see two excellent musicals (the aforementioned winner and The Scottsboro Boys) alongside the usual generic musicals that fill out the nomination quota (Catch Me If You Can, Sister Act). And Mormon really does have one of the funniest scores on Broadway, certainly the funniest since Avenue Q, which deservedly won the Best Musical Tony at the 2004 ceremony. Some of the lyrics are a tad sloppy, but the concepts of the songs are strong enough that the lyrics don’t have to be impeccable in order for offensively hilarious musical comedy to ensue.

            That said, it would have been nice to see the Tony for Best Score go to The Scottsboro Boys, the last collaboration between John Kander and the late Fred Ebb. Alas, it seems that, just as they did with Chicago, Kander & Ebb have produced a work that may only be appreciated with the passage of time. And The Book of Mormon’s score was also a very deserving work, so I’m far from broken up about the final results. Certainly either of those shows were infinitely more deserving than the generic Sister Act or the disappointingly flat Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

            The biggest turkey of the evening, as it turns out, was a number from a show that won’t officially open until Tuesday: Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. Leaving behind the wire-work (probably wisely), the number consisted of a deathly dull romantic duet between the two leads. I suppose the music was interesting enough, but the lyrics were mediocre at best, and at worst something far more heinous. I fear I may have emitted an audible groan when Mary-Jane declared in song that there was “No such thing as time,” which is not true, and if true is not in any way relevant to her relationship with Peter Parker.

            Neil Patrick Harris was, as always, a terrific host (though that really goes without saying). Brooke Shields managed to make a complete arse of herself twice in the space of an evening. The ATW threw every award it could find at The Book of Mormon, as if desperately signaling, “Hey, we know a good show when we hear one! See?! See?!!” And all in all everyone got a show that the frequently dull Oscar and Emmy ceremonies could stand to take a lesson from.