When this year’s Glastonbury was cancelled, I started thinking about music a lot and, by extension, lyrics. Even though I’m in the business of the written word, and trying to get as much emotion into a paragraph as possible, some lyrics have transformed me in a way a novel never could. Live music is a different, but also transformative, experience. I’ve only been to two festivals in my life, and I had to leave one early because I was too anxious. The whole thing was made worse by my best friend calling me on the way to tell me Amy Winehouse had died.
I often wonder about the books that some of the most brilliant songwriters would have produced. If Winehouse had written fiction, would it be as intelligent, as sharp, dark or funny as her lyrics were? Could Prince have harnessed his brilliance into a series of novels? Probably, because he was Prince. Or is song-writing a specific skill that only lends itself to that form? Are those words, and the feelings they summon, only as effective when they’re put to music? I guess I answer my own question when I think about how impossible it would be for me to write even one line of a song.
