Spring Won't You Come

This song began with lyrics by fellow tendril, Terrance G. Terrance and I have collaborated on five songs now, and I think they've all turned out nicely. I'm particularly proud of "Farmageddon" and "My Onetime Friend". Here's how the collaboration works, Terrance sends me an email with lyrics and some musical ideas, and then I do my best to mold the lyrics into a song. I enjoy working this way because I normally start with the melody and fit the words together afterwards. Working with lyrics first gets me out of my normal writing habits and forces me in some new and interesting directions. Here are the words Terrance sent:

Spring,
Spring won't you come?
Come out and wake up the flowers
Show us your colours!

Sun,
Sun won't you rise?
Rise up high above the clouds
and warm up our faces

I like the simplicity and the repetition. That's really what you need from good song lyrics. In Terrance's lyrics I thought it was interesting that he repeated the last word in the second line, as the first word in the third line. Quite cool. I like to imagine that if you were to lift a song's lyrics off the page, that somehow all the words would still fit together. That each part is connected to the whole. That each word is held in the song by meter, meaning, consonance, assonance, and rhyme. That's the effect I go for more than any particular rhyme or metrical scheme. Just a sense that everything connects... Here's my version:

spring won't you come
come and wake up the flowers
flowers with their colors
colors of the sun

Sun won't you rise
high above the clouds
wake up all the flowers
sleeping in the ground

In the first verse I use Terrance's trick. Each line begins with the last word of the previous line. To my ears all the words hold together even without a single rhyme. Quite a cool effect. In the second verse I have some parallel construction with the first verse, but now I'm using rhyme instead of repetition to hold things together. Really it's just the slant/rhyme of the words "clouds" and "ground" but it's enough to get that sensation of something clasping shut as the verse ends.

Here's the recording...