Waxing Lyrical

I was cleaning out my room on Saturday so I could fit all my uni stuff into it when I stumbled across some old notebooks that I'd hoarded. Back in my teenage years I had used said notebooks to write down lyrical inspiration if and when it occurred (the emphasis being very much on the "if"). Anyway I naturally decided to look through them, before I mercifully condemned them to the recycling where they belonged and whilst doing this I was struck by one overriding thought:

I was a pretty odd and awkward teenager.

This I suspect many of you knew or suspected already. It certainly holds true for my lyric writing. If I were to disappear and the police were to go through my stuff or if Time Team ran out of old things to dig up and decided to come sniffing round West London that is definitely the conclusion they would come to. As well as just plain odd my lyrics were often derivative or just plain bad. Any occasional needles of inspirational were completely lost in a vast haystack of angsty, cliched rubbish.

Not that anything's really got better since. I *think* I'm alright at writing lyrics when I have a song and a vague theme to work with, as was the case with Hands of Cuba, but I find it very difficult to do unless I have some music already and most of the time I can't be arsed and have no inspiration. Perhaps I need someone to be a Morrisey to my Marr. And also for me to be as good as Marr. It's a shame because I'd quite like to do more lyric writing and I think I'm fundamentally deficient as a "songwriter" in some way if I can't do any.

If any lyricists could shed any light on how they do what I do it would be much appreciated. Meanwhile I've got a killer first line to develop:

"I really love you
Cos you're lovely
and that"

Bob Dylan's got nothing on me.