You had the melody
before you had the words.
So you sang something
to hold its shape.
A line about a car.
A line that rhymed with nothing.
A line you would never put
on a record.
That was fine.
It was a placeholder.
The band learned the song
around it.
The drummer started
landing the fill
on the second syllable.
The guitarist left a gap
after the word
that was always going to go.
You sang it at every rehearsal
for two months.
Now you sit down
to write the real line,
and everything you write
sounds wrong.
Not bad.
Wrong.
Too many syllables.
The vowel in the wrong place.
The stress landing
where the old word
had taught everybody
to expect it.
The placeholder
was never holding a place.
It was being rehearsed.
Every time you sang it,
it got a little more
like the song,
until it was the only version
anybody could hear.
Your ear does that
to anything it repeats.
Familiar starts to feel correct,
and correct starts to feel
like the only way it could go.
So make placeholders
impossible to grow attached to.
Sing vowels.
Sing nonsense on purpose,
different nonsense every time,
so nothing has the chance
to set.
On the lyric sheet,
put every placeholder in brackets,
so the whole band can see
which lines are on loan.
Then give the brackets a date.
Before the third rehearsal,
every bracket gets a real line.
Not a good one.
A real one,
written to say something,
which you can improve later,
and which the band learns
instead of the car.
And if a placeholder
has already set,
do not fight it in your head.
Write three real lines,
record each one
over the same take,
and listen the next morning
with fresh ears.
One of them will sound
like the song.
Often not the one
you have been singing.
A placeholder is a promise
to come back.
Keep it
before the song learns
to live without you.
– Serguey Asael Shinder
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