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The Promise Of Love
different interpretations and to be willing to embrace
them. And that proved extremely apt in this case.
The song was picked up by some musicians on the
Kompoz.com website and the song that they created
is fantastic, but probably a little more in the soft rock
rather than hard rock direction.
That didn’t matter a jot though when I listened to
how great it was! I think this is a really important
insight for lyricists to take on-board, especially if
you are lyric only writers. You may have a vision
about how the song should sound but unless you can
express that through a rough music or vocal demo
then it’s unlikely that musicians will ‘hear’ your lyric
in exactly the same way you do. And sometimes
what they come up with will be fresher and better
than what you would have created if you could play a
The Promise of Love – Some useful insights for lyric guitar or piano.
writers. This month’s edition of Write Away has got a
love theme going on. So I’m going to draw out some Think about whether the gender of your protagonist
insights about lyric writing using a lyric that I wrote could be flipped?
about love. I wrote the lyric with the idea that it would be sung
from a male perspective. However, when it started
How ‘The Promise of Love’ came about getting worked on by musicians, it was a woman
who submitted the vocal audition. Jen Carie’s voice
I like writing lyrics that tell a story and the story is amazing and it was a no-brainer upon hearing the
being told in The Promise of Love is about someone song with her vocal that it should be done that way.
who had once been in love but his hopes of love had
not been realised. He is left with old love letters that The lyric itself required just one very minimal alter-
he had written but had never plucked up the courage ation to work perfectly with a female protagonist,
to send. changing ‘him’ to her’. And I think it ended up being
more interesting to have a woman as that love-struck
I’d been listening to a lot of songs by the 1990s bluesy person who was too shy to reveal her feelings to the
rock band Cinderella in the lead up to writing this person she loved.
lyric, and their hit ‘Nobody’s Fool’ had got imprint-
ed in my brain. It’s an awesome song, an epically The moral of this story is not to limit your lyric’s
dramatic rock anthem. And I had the idea to make potential by dictating that the singer must be male
my lyric take on a similar dramatic tone. So you get or female. There will be some songs that require a
the opening line talking about seeing a shooting star particular gender perspective but many of your lyrics
sizzling as it fell. can probably be adapted to be sung by a male or
female singer.
So with the coming together of the initial lyric idea
and a reference song to influence the lyric’s feel, I was Sprinkle personal experiences and emotions into
able to create a lyric that I was very pleased with. your lyrics
This lyric is not based upon me, which is probably
Be open to different genres and interpretations a good thing. However, there is one small part of it
When I got around to posting my lyric for musicians where I drew inspiration from a personal experience.
to work on, I stated that I imagined it being done in I once delivered a Valentine’s card to a girl I fancied
a classic rock style. That was the vision I had in my late one evening. As I stood in a side street plucking
head but experience has taught me to be open to up the courage to approach her house and post the
08 www.writeawaymagazine.co.uk
