who writes the songs?

My musical genre is what has been called Americana.  I was going to try to describe it and /I came across this on he web which sounds pretty good to me: Americana is contemporary music that incorporates elements of various American roots music styles, including country, roots-rock, folk, bluegrass, R&B and blues, resulting in a distinctive roots-oriented sound that lives in a world apart from the pure forms of the genres upon which it may draw. 

Well that and the music of my youth.  I have four big bins of cds and I just go through them again and again. I add some now and then but it is mostly from artists who I already know.  I really don't know what the popular music of today is, well it all seems to be split into various genres doesn't it?  I really should keep up because, well why should I?  I like the music I have now and listening to it again and again I don't really get bored, it seems like I get deeper and deeper into the music I like.

I'm not very sophisticated about music, I don't know melody from rhythm.  Lyrics are pretty important to me.  I don't care much about out and out love songs where it's all about how beautiful the other person is and how much they are loved, I like more of a complicated situation.

Well I love stringing words together, you know like a line of pebbles on the beach arranging them this way and then that and finally coming up with a nice arrangement, hopefully with a little pop to it.  You know sometimes I listen to a song and I think that this is so deep, and I pull the little pamphlet out of the jewel case and read the lyrics, and suddenly they are not that good, they're a little flat and when you put them together they don't quite make sense.  But then I read them again with the memory of the music in my head and it all falls together again. 

I don't understand it at all, what is the connection between the music and the lyrics?  Which comes first?  Surely the music, but maybe the composer already has a line of thought in mind,  Maybe he has just finished reading about the Edmond Fitzgerald and a phrase comes into his mind and he has to fit it into a meter and then a tone into the meter, in the case of the Edmond Fitzgerald, something a bit ominous, and then,,,

Well I am just speculating while on the other side of a great lake there is an actual songwriter.  So Beagles I wonder if you could elucidate what goes on in the head of a songwriter, from the first line of thought or snatch of music to the finished product?


This corona thing, not only has it curtailed my activities and social life, it has even taken over politics which is kind of like sports to a big sports fan.  I know Beagles likes stepping out in the morning and not seeing a trace of any neighbor and Old Dog seems like pretty much a hoimebody, but me, I am nothing without other people.  I am going to have to develop some kind of life of the mind.  Sounds daunting.