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Old 01-07-2018, 05:37 PM   #1
slunken
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Default regarding not having lyrics written until the last minute when recording

I see this mentioned in SP history (and other 90s bands history) quite a bit. Specifically referencing Siamese Dream. If this is the case, how come lyrics don't evolve or change over the course of time, like arrangements sometimes do, after the album comes out?

Is it proof that the lyrics are the least important part of the song, or is it proof that they (songwriters) are often lying about their lyric choices in the sense they want you to believe they were dashed off in an emotional fury?

 
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Old 01-07-2018, 05:53 PM   #2
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It's hard for audiences to sing along if the words change.

 
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Old 01-07-2018, 08:32 PM   #3
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Kurt Cobain said this a lot. In his case we know it was an exaggeration. Home demo's have been dated using the brand of cassette. I also hear artists say something similar about their biggest songs being written in minutes. Sabbath's Paranoid, Manson's Beautiful People and in Billy's Case Walking Shade.

 
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Old 01-07-2018, 09:32 PM   #4
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Or in Rivers Cuomo's case; they come from a spreadsheet.

 
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Old 01-07-2018, 10:15 PM   #5
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Yeah, haha. I've read that he's "broke the code" so to speak when it comes to song writing.

 
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Old 01-07-2018, 10:35 PM   #6
teh b0lly!!1
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it's an interesting thought.

i personally think many artists do it as some kind of a way to self-produce themselves into not overthinking or second-guessing what they come up with. they get themselves to a point where they know they have the bed track ready, and then they only need to flesh out whatever fleeting idea it is they have running around in their minds, and commit to it immediately. it takes a certain emotional clarity and focus, but still (mostly) the final outcome in those cases will be an impressionistic, out of focus kind of lyric. like with those SP songs you mentioned, or even stuff like U2's The Unforgettable Fire.

but that is the ideal scenario, of course. i'm sure it doesn't work out quite so well plenty of times, and for every Yesterday we have a song like Running With The Devil by Van Halen.

 
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Old 01-07-2018, 10:47 PM   #7
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and for every galapagos you get a Run2Me

 
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Old 01-07-2018, 11:09 PM   #8
Forgotten Child
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That often happens cause it's way easier to write lyrics for a song than to write music for lyrics.

 
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Old 01-07-2018, 11:10 PM   #9
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Must have been "written" at run 2 p...

 
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Old 01-09-2018, 04:48 PM   #10
Grox
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billy didn't do this very much, kurt sort of did, although it's true when the Pumpkins got to Atlanta to record SD he hadn't written the majority of the lyrics. you can hear him singing some of the filler lyrics for Geek in the Unbearable Likeness of Many clip from Vieuphoria- he sings "be yourself" instead of "if by chance." i mean, listen to Quiet and Other Songs, it's filled with gibberish lyrics, and that was in October 1992

 
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Old 01-09-2018, 04:50 PM   #11
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but that doesn't mean he got up to the mic on the day he was doing vocals and just kinda improved it. he wrote in his confessions blog that he brought a typewriter and would methodically go over the lyrics after recording basic tracks and even used cue cards for thematic inspiration, also cut-up method and that one thing eno came up with, spacing on the name...

 
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Old 01-09-2018, 05:10 PM   #12
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Oblique Strategies

 
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Old 01-09-2018, 07:17 PM   #13
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singing without solid lyrics, especially while playing an instrument, is way harder than singing with set lyrics - which narrows the improvisational focus from coming up with words on the spot to maybe just alternating the melody or something here & there

considering how much the pumpkins would improvise musically in their music already, it makes sense that he'd want to leave the album lyrics as the solid foundation that everything else could kind of fluctuate around, instead of changing them up as well - aside from obv the moments where they'd add entirely new sections to songs i.e. the extended I Am One and things like that

 
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Old 01-10-2018, 12:00 PM   #14
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The Jimmy Jakes of consequence.

 
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