Besides the OP, and Suzanne Vega's recent series of posts for the NYT, here's another, almost completely opposite, guide to songwriting, extracted from a (very) long article by David Samuels from n+1 cheekily called "Justin Timberlake Has a Cold" --
While [Mike] Caren’s rules are not comprehensive or exclusive, it is easy to measure their value by a glance at the dozens of gold and platinum records hanging in his office. He is happy to run down his rules for me.
“First, it starts with an expression of ‘Hey,’ ‘Oops,’ ‘Excuse me,’” he begins. “Second is a personal statement: ‘I’m a hustler, baby,’ ‘I wanna love you,’ ‘I need you tonight.’ Third is telling you what to do: ‘Put your hands up,’ ‘Give me all your love,’ ‘Jump.’ Fourth is asking a question: ‘Will you love me tomorrow,’ ‘Where have you been all my life,’ ‘Will the real Slim Shady please stand up.’”
He takes a deep breath, and rattles off another four rules. “Five is logic,” he says, “which could be counting, or could be spelling or phonetics: ‘1-2-3-4, let the bodies hit the floor,’ or ‘Ca-li-fornia is comp-li-cated,’ those kind of things. Six would be catchphrases that roll off the tip of your tongue because you know them: ‘Never say never,’ ‘Rain on my parade.’ Seven would be what we call stutter, like, ‘D-d-don’t stop the beat,’ but it could also be repetition: ‘Will the real Slim Shady please stand up, please stand up, please stand up.’ Eight is going back to logic again, like hot or cold, heaven or hell, head to toe, all those kind of things.” The ninth rule of hit songwriting is silence.
[...]
His favorite example of a song that uses the most rules in the fewest words is a hit by the rapper Ludacris, “What’s Your Fantasy,” which starts off with the lyric “I wanna li-li-li-lick you from your head to your toes.” Caren loves that song. “In the first line: a personal statement, ‘I want to,’ a stutter, repetition, ‘li-lick you,’ logic, ‘from your head to your toes, move from the bed down to the down to the, to the floor,’” he explains. “‘I gotta know’—another personal statement—and asks a question, ‘What’s your fantasy?’ So he’s got six of them, in the first two lines of the song.”
A similar deconstruction of pop songs is "The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way)" by The Timelords/The KLF. It's a tongue-in-cheek guide to achieving a No. 1 single with no money or musical skills:
The Photo Album is my least favorite record we’ve
ever made because it was a really difficult,
arduous process to make it. We almost broke up
during the recording of the record and then the
tour after that was horrible. I look back on that
record and I think I didn’t have enough songs —
I barely had 10 songs and two of the 10 were barely
complete thoughts.
Funny, given that The Photo Album is usually one of the top 2-3 Death Cab albums[1] of their most dedicated, long-term fans. For what it's worth, I think the second half of Kintsugi is weak, and I hope that this isn't a result of Walla's departure.
[1] Mine are probably Transatlanticism, Plans, and The Photo Album, although The Open Door EP holds a special place in my heart.
Michael Stipe said in an interview that "Fables of the Reconstruction" was his least liked record. When they recorded it the band was exhausted from touring, they were burned out and very negative. The negativity made for a dark record. He felt the negativity wasn't what they were about. That album is one of my favorites because of the darkness.
Ben addressed this divide between the artist and fan in the interview. It's so true that the context in which a song is heard becomes part of the song in a person's memory.
I'm a recently-become fan of DCfC. I can already tell that I'm going to listen to their songs many times over and think about every lyric in their albums the same way I did with REM.
Which is crazy because fully half of REM's whole catalog is inessential, and Fables is if not their second best album at least their third best, and is the bridge between the Murmur sound and the musical trajectory they'd start on with Document. Also: there's a difference between "darkness" and "melancholy", and also: better "dark" than "sophomorically shrill", which is the tone they adopted on Pageant, Document, and (especially) Green.
You can do better than Death Cab! I liked some of their earlier albums, but their lyrics have always been sort of weak and superficial to me (those lyrics also ruined The Postal Service for me).
To each their own – I like (a lot of) the lyrics of both Death Cab and The Postal Service because they're refreshingly simple and straightforward without being eye-rollingly cheesy. I think they pull off an "I'm just a normal person telling you about my thoughts and feelings" effect without being inane.
Edit: And thanks for the interesting run-down of REM albums. I've never listened to them much, and you've given me a good sense of where to start.
Yet, Thomas coyly omitted his actual #1 and #2 picks!
The place to start with REM would be Automatic for the People, a great record by any standard; it is quite forthright, lyrically, about where it's coming from.
Second would be Murmur, which is somewhat the reverse. You get the feeling, but the words are ornamentation or invitations to projection.
Murmur, Reckoning/Fables, Automatic, Document, Pageant, Green, Out of Time, and after that can someone just make me a mix tape with the good songs from the other 7 albums?
Pageant was a bridge from observation of problems to the realization that average people can make a difference. I haven't taken the time to make a time line, but it probably paralleled Stipes' increased political activism.
I lost track of them after Green, but I think everything up to there is pretty relevant. They're all just different recordings that follow the band's maturation as people and growth as musicians. They would have become boring quickly if everything sounded like Murmur.
Which bands do you recommend for meaningful lyrics?
Low, Neutral Milk Hotel if you like early REM, a lot of Wilco, Midlake (a bit on the nose though), Sparklehorse, maybe the Replacements. Just not Bon Iver.
I haven't given it a critical listen yet, but have run through it a few times since I discovered it's existence (yesterday). I was apprehensive when I found out (yesterday) that Walla had split, but it's reassuringly solid so far to me.
What's up with the marketing though? I stumbled on this new one in Spotify trying to find some older stuff that I don't have.
"You've Haunted Me All My Life" and "Hold No Guns" feel like they were already done (and better) on Plans and on Ben Gibbard's solo album. "Ingenue" and "Binary Sea" feel sort of 'meh' to me. "Binary Sea" in particular feels like a love ballad rehash of Transatlanticism minus the heart-on-the-sleeve nature that the original had.
I think "No Room in Frame" and "The Ghosts of Beverly Drive" are great, even though the latter sounds like a spruced up version of "Blacking out the Friction" ;)
I love the idea of comparing an artist's songs to thoughts they've expressed in their earlier works. Even if there is repetition, it helps to see their growth and trajectory.
agreed about the marketing. i follow a lot of indie blogs so i had heard about the new record, but very little considering it's death cab. they tend to come up in the mainstream a decent amount as well, but i haven't seen anything.
re: walla's departure, i think they'll be ok without him. gibbard is unique and the leader but to me, the saving grace of this band will always be jason mcgerr. he's one of the great drummers and creative forces in this genre today.
Absolutely agree. Like the drummer for My Morning Jacket, he totally makes the band for me. The earlier stuff is good, but to put grooves that creative behind already good songs is the sauce...
Plans was my first album they heard (like a lot of people I suppose), though I would probably say We Have The Facts and Transatlanticism are pretty close to being my favourites.
Oddly enough, I never got into The Photo Album, despite trying to listen to it many times. I should give it another go.
While [Mike] Caren’s rules are not comprehensive or exclusive, it is easy to measure their value by a glance at the dozens of gold and platinum records hanging in his office. He is happy to run down his rules for me.
“First, it starts with an expression of ‘Hey,’ ‘Oops,’ ‘Excuse me,’” he begins. “Second is a personal statement: ‘I’m a hustler, baby,’ ‘I wanna love you,’ ‘I need you tonight.’ Third is telling you what to do: ‘Put your hands up,’ ‘Give me all your love,’ ‘Jump.’ Fourth is asking a question: ‘Will you love me tomorrow,’ ‘Where have you been all my life,’ ‘Will the real Slim Shady please stand up.’”
He takes a deep breath, and rattles off another four rules. “Five is logic,” he says, “which could be counting, or could be spelling or phonetics: ‘1-2-3-4, let the bodies hit the floor,’ or ‘Ca-li-fornia is comp-li-cated,’ those kind of things. Six would be catchphrases that roll off the tip of your tongue because you know them: ‘Never say never,’ ‘Rain on my parade.’ Seven would be what we call stutter, like, ‘D-d-don’t stop the beat,’ but it could also be repetition: ‘Will the real Slim Shady please stand up, please stand up, please stand up.’ Eight is going back to logic again, like hot or cold, heaven or hell, head to toe, all those kind of things.” The ninth rule of hit songwriting is silence.
[...]
His favorite example of a song that uses the most rules in the fewest words is a hit by the rapper Ludacris, “What’s Your Fantasy,” which starts off with the lyric “I wanna li-li-li-lick you from your head to your toes.” Caren loves that song. “In the first line: a personal statement, ‘I want to,’ a stutter, repetition, ‘li-lick you,’ logic, ‘from your head to your toes, move from the bed down to the down to the, to the floor,’” he explains. “‘I gotta know’—another personal statement—and asks a question, ‘What’s your fantasy?’ So he’s got six of them, in the first two lines of the song.”