Text underlay
That’s a geeky music term for the alignment of sung syllables with notes in a melodic line. It involves the matchup of syllables to notes and also deals with the natural stresses of meaning and harmonic rhythm. Open vowels on long notes, properly spaced consonants, and so on.
I warned you it was geeky. But maybe it will help you explain to your children why it’s not OK to repeat something just because they heard it in a song.
Vocal music often ignores the rules of grammar for the sake of text underlay. Also for the sake of authenticity (depending on the genre) or cultural effect, or just plain shock value. We can eliminate several genres from this discussion right now. Rap, hip-hop, country, reggae, rhythm and blues, heavy metal…you get the idea. Correct grammar in those songs would sound out of place. So what’s left? Mainstream pop, romantic ballads, adult contemporary, anything without a cultural basis that justifies butchering the language. And that brings me to Neil Diamond.
Remember this gem?
Songs she sang to me
Songs she brang to me
Words that rang in me
Rhyme that sprang from me
Warmed the night
And what was right
Became me
Brang? Really? So committed to four rhyming lines that he shoe-horned in a word that doesn’t even exist? Nice text underlay but atrocious grammar. It’s not the Rolling Stones (I Can’t Get No Satisfaction), it’s not Elvis (You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hound Dog), and it’s not Caribbean dialect (Day-O), so one wrong word sticks out. Did he think no one would notice? The lyrics are about the artist’s muse and how she inspired him to write good songs. Apparently the muse was on a coffee break when he wrote this one.
Text underlay and grammar could have coexisted with something like:
Songs she’d sing to me
Songs she’d bring to me
Words that ring in me
Rhymes that breathlessly,
Warm the night
And what was right
Became me
Scoff if you will, but the best adherent to proper text underlay in modern music is Weird Al Yankovic. His parodies are classic examples of perfect text underlay, and the occasional grammatical lapses are calculated, precise, and consciously done for comedic effect. No rhymes are ever awkward or forced.
I might never forgive Neil Diamond, but I do acknowledge the need for nonstandard English in many kinds of music. In his 1957 radio show, Stan Freberg did a classic version of “Old Man River” with proper grammar as a comedy bit.
When Heyward and Gershwin wrote “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” the text underlay just wouldn’t have worked if someone had corrected it to “Elizabeth, You Have Officially Become My Significant Other.”
The post Text underlay appeared first on TextCPR.
