MEDIA

“Which comes first – the words or the music?”

When Kait and Brian were young aspiring writers who listened (as every good little musical theater lover did) to Merrily We Roll Along, they did not believe that they would one day be asked, as Charlie is, “Which comes first, the words or the music?” This is not because they did not have grandiose ideas about how successful they could be. On the contrary, they dreamed up very successful careers for themselves as they stared into their respective bathroom mirrors, practiced scales on their respective instruments, wrote in their respective journals. Rather, they didn’t think that people would be all that interested in the answer to that question because they thought Sondheim had answered it rather concisely and probably pretty accurately: the contract.

Turns out contracts are often late in the game and people are perpetually interested in what comes first. So, which is it?

Both. Neither. I mean… I don’t know really. Somewhere in between? Actually – the fight. Is that an answer? Because, generally, it all begins with a fight about what the song is about. Then a hook (see: HOOKS) and then after all of that, a 2nd fight over who will go second. We both want to go second, though going second always takes longer and is, honestly, harder.

We’re lucky because we can both write music first and lyrics first. Most of the time, one of us will start a song once we have the hook and we’ve agreed on the general structure that we want to use for the song, and that person will write up to the bridge (so that’s 2-3 verses and 2 choruses). Then the other one takes the material written and they write up to the bridge. At that point, one of us generally has an idea for the bridge. (If not, we fight over who has to write that first…) Then we finish off the song – extending it in an exciting way musically or lyrically. We spend a lot of time in the room together but we very rarely write in the same room (except when we rewrite sequences, for which we rent practice rooms and spread everything out with our computers and get down to work… or dance, as was the case for MY PARTY DRESS – as you might imagine).

When we occasionally write pop songs without a musical theater context, we find that it is very fun and fast and one of us takes a pass through at most of the song without even talking to the other and then the other takes it and makes it more fun and pretty and we feel very self-satisfied.

I don’t know if this answer means anything to any of you at all but it’s the truth. Someday, we would like to have a centrally-located office, where we could work at a big table or go into separate rooms. Perhaps there would be an intern and a coffee maker. A water cooler even. And maybe we’d even wear suits.

Okay, we’ll never wear suits. But we do like office supplies A LOT.

For mp3s of our songs, visit the MUSIC PAGE.

For lyrics to our songs, visit the LYRICS BLOG.

For videos, visit our page on YOUTUBE.

For photos, visit our page on PICASA.

Sheet music is available in the shop at NEW MUSICAL THEATRE.

Comments are closed.