MUSIC
SO N GWR ITI N G
SONGWRITING Q&A
Q & A //
W IT H
M AT T
R E D M A N
Q U E S T I O N
He’s one of the most well-known and respected songwriters and worship leaders in the world. And now, Matt Redman is sharing his hard-won wisdom with you! Read along as Matt helps tackle the intricacies of compelling songwriting and shares insight on maximizing your effectiveness as a leader within smaller contexts.
How do you create a natural flow and feeling of the lyrics without over-simplifying phrases and losing some of what you hope to communicate through the song? MICHAELA GIENGER
Michaela, thanks so much for this—I love questions about the process of songwriting. It can be so powerful and profound to see the fruit of a song in people’s lives. But I also love the front end of the process too—the creating and crafting of the song. The band U2 said that sometimes songwriting is like a playground, and at other times it’s more like a boxing ring. I can really relate to that. There are times when everything is so enjoyable, and the song is flowing so freely, that it just feels like “play.” And at other times— and this is maybe more often the case— it’s like a boxing ring; there’s a sense of contending and fighting for the song to come into being. It’s a wrestle. And I think what your question gets into is that “wrestle”—how to write a song that has substance and weight, but at the same time isn’t overly complicated. There’s no way to cover this whole topic in length here, but I would answer your question by drawing on C.S. Lewis’ thoughts about the three kinds of language we use when we talk about faith: Theological, Poetic, and Ordinary. Essentially, when we write a worship song, there’s a dance between these three different types of language going on in our lyrics. You mention having songs feel “simple.”
45
