Scott Adams Songwriting Experiment - and a song survey

Shane McEwan pointed me to a recent songwriting experiment by Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame), who launched the project in his blog after pointing out that hit songs often have gibberish lyrics.

In a recent blog post, Scott invited his readers to help him write a song. Rules included: max 2 lines, grammatically correct, no klunky-sounding words, about life or love, and "It should sound like it might have deep meaning to someone else."

In his follow-up post, The Hit Song You Wrote, Scott posted the final lyrics as well a link to an MP3 of the song put together by German band Rivo Drei.

Heh, not bad. As Shane pointed out "it sounds a good as anything that gets produced in the American Idol cloning facilities."

And a brilliant marketing move by Rivo Drei, as well. I was amused by their About page (they have an English version). An excerpt: "We are a tremendously successful pop/rock band based in Berlin, Germany. Our three band members are amongst the best instrumentalists you can find in Europe. And we're very good-looking, too. Girls want to be with us. Guys want to be like us. If you haven't heard about us yet, shame on you. But be glad that you're here now."

But the experiment got me thinking more about why I like certain songs, and whether or not lyrics are important. For me, the music is key. The song can have the most beautiful lyrics in the world but if I don't like the music, then I usually don't like the song.

I tend to be drawn toward songs that have a catchy melodic or musical hook. If the lyrics are also memorable, that enhances the song for me. I like the Beatles' "I Love You Yeah Yeah Yeah" despite the lyrics.

Hm...though now that I think of it, the songs I tend to listen to over and over again tend to focus on lyrics, though, so I suppose I'm already contradicting myself.

Hm, must think more about this.

A Survey:

What about you? Do you tend to focus on the music or the lyrics? Which are more important to you?


Photo by Michelle Poirier.

I have a new blogTO post up, by the way: Some Words Spoken: An Interview With Monica S. Kuebler. Monica is the associate editor and webmistress of Rue Morgue Magazine and also runs Burning Effigy Press in Toronto.



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