Very interesting to read of your process for this particular recording relating to vocals. I'm trying to remember the last time I fit lyrics to music and what that was like. Before I knew you I'd just write words and music completely separately with no thought of the other with a few exceptions. Invariably, writing a guitar part will suggest some kind of vocal harmony or phrases but when I found I relied on that for creating lyrics, those were universally weak (in the context of my own writing). At that time, I wrote frequently enough that I had a surplus of options and I'd just literally try to fit words I previously wrote to a piece of music I was currently writing and, if it was feeling compatible, I'd just pare, reshape, and heavily edit the words to become more connected to the music. I felt the words, if read on their own, would be stronger because they started out being their own thing and not something written with music in mind.
My lyric hangups include avoiding line rhymes as much as possible (I love what I call "ghost" rhymes or implied rhymes), not necessarily sticking to a meter and the sung phrase(s) don't have to match the section of a song (for instance I could start a phrase in the refrain, but the actual completion of the phrase could be the chorus, or 10 seconds later after an instrumental break or whenever). So, unfortunately I'm a terrible pop / rock vocalist.
If I were a more of an actual or natural singer, the lyric hangups might be much less restrictive because obvious vocalists write their lines much like any other instrumentalist writes theirs and their freedom and dexterity are more on display and can help take a song to an unforeseen place. I wish I had a little of this.
Very interesting to read of your process for this particular recording relating to vocals. I'm trying to remember the last time I fit lyrics to music and what that was like. Before I knew you I'd just write words and music completely separately with no thought of the other with a few exceptions. Invariably, writing a guitar part will suggest some kind of vocal harmony or phrases but when I found I relied on that for creating lyrics, those were universally weak (in the context of my own writing). At that time, I wrote frequently enough that I had a surplus of options and I'd just literally try to fit words I previously wrote to a piece of music I was currently writing and, if it was feeling compatible, I'd just pare, reshape, and heavily edit the words to become more connected to the music. I felt the words, if read on their own, would be stronger because they started out being their own thing and not something written with music in mind.
My lyric hangups include avoiding line rhymes as much as possible (I love what I call "ghost" rhymes or implied rhymes), not necessarily sticking to a meter and the sung phrase(s) don't have to match the section of a song (for instance I could start a phrase in the refrain, but the actual completion of the phrase could be the chorus, or 10 seconds later after an instrumental break or whenever). So, unfortunately I'm a terrible pop / rock vocalist.
If I were a more of an actual or natural singer, the lyric hangups might be much less restrictive because obvious vocalists write their lines much like any other instrumentalist writes theirs and their freedom and dexterity are more on display and can help take a song to an unforeseen place. I wish I had a little of this.