#topic: lyrics

[tayfabe75]

Stevie: I wanna say one thing, because I have it here and I want to get it out of the way, I don't want to forget to do it before we hang up. I would've thought that you would've written more like me, and now I don't know if you or George wrote this part, but I'm just gonna read you something that makes me think that you would take your formal poems. But also there's a line in this that's one of the reasons that I totally fell in love with your lyrics, because… Anyway, I'm just gonna read this to you, okay? So it says, ​"She's inducing sleep to avoid pain/​And I think she's got a gun /​Divinely decreed and custom made /​She calls on the phone like the old days, expecting the world /​Don't fall in love with the moment and think you're in love with the girl". I think that ​"Don't fall in love with the moment and think you're in love with the girl," first of all, that's just like my life, right? Matty: Yeah, right? Stevie: That made me… The way that these words are, I would think that you actually started with words and that you didn't start with music. Between you and George, and I don't know where you begin and he ends because you know, I understand that symbiotic thing that you guys have. Unless you tell them, nobody's ever gonna know, but the fact is that your lyrics are – and I don't even wanna say lyrics, your poetry is like, so good and so seductive and so intriguing. I mean there's all kinds of great sexy words I could use, but it's like… I just love it.

May 5, 2020: Stevie Nicks gushes to Matty about his lyrics and poetry on The Face podcast. (source)

[thursdaybandcomments]

[tayfabe75]

"The poetry aspect is the fact that the music does come first, but it's about, I suppose, that I write what I see and I write what I hear a lot. So I tend to be somewhere and voyeuristically overhear something and I'll write it down. I write down a lot of concepts, I write down a lot of stuff that doesn't rhyme. The biggest moment that I've had with that is, we have this song called Love It If We Made It, which has kind of become I suppose our biggest song, it's our big kind of political moment. It talks about everything that was kind of messed up in the world from 2018 onwards. There's kind of references to this and references to Trump. I remember having this moment in the song where the lyrics, the melody had to go bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bah, 1 – 2‑3 – 4‑5 – 6‑7, and I needed seven syllables. So I was thinking, what are these powerful syllables? What are seven syllables that really reach the time? And then I found Donald Trump's quote of, ​'I moved on her like a bitch.' And I just screamed, I moved on her like a bitch! And that is the synthesis that I'm always searching, finding… It's like painting by numbers but not making it rudimentary, do you know what I mean? I need to let the music inspire the poetry and then make musical poetry around it. That's kind of what I do."

May 5, 2020: Matty explains his songwriting style and process. (source)

[thursdaybandcomments]

[tayfabe75]

"The whole point of this record was that I… it goes back to identity, and it goes back to… there's lots of stuff on this record, songs like 'Change of Heart' and stuff, where I'm answering questions from the first album and I'm making references to the first album and I'm talking about being wiser now and more naive then. And there's this back and forth between the album that preceded this album and this album, that our fans will really, really understand the subtext of. 'The Sound' is kind of like a parody of a 1975 song. That's kind of what I wanted it to be. I wanted it to be everything. The swallowing the dictionary thing- If I get prided on being self-aware, then I have to be self-aware, and I understand that it can come across as being a bit wanky, I'm not stupid, do you know what I mean? So that's what I'm kind of saying. But those are also some of my best lyrics, so I'm kind of taking my identity seriously and playing with it at the same time."

January 19, 2016: While discussing his band's aesthetic, Matty is asked about his expansive vocabulary. (source)

[thursdaybandcomments]

[waywardvictorianconfessions]

I have a really hard time reading Emilie's handwriting on a screen, and I don't have a printer, so I really hope somebody adds the BTM lyrics to a website soon.

[sehnsuchtskrank]

Was ist passiert? Hast Du vergessen warum? Oder wieder mal Angst vor der Welt? Fühlst Dich leer, und weißt nicht weiter, oder hast Du zum ersten Mal festgestellt Dass sich vielleicht niemals Wirklich erfüllen wird wovon man so träumt immerzu. Das mag vielleicht sein, aber wer hier entscheidet Was geträumt wird Bist doch Du.

Komm in meinen Arm - Weber-Beckmann