She eloquently remembers her songwriting mentor, John Stewart, who recently passed away, and gives him full credit for inspiring and challenging her to become a better songwriter.
I include just a couple of paragraphs of Rosanne's post on the infernal/eternal question: what comes first the music or the lyrics:People always ask me, "What comes first, the music or the lyrics?" I don't know why people are so fascinated with the answer to that question, and the question always makes me slightly nervous, as if I should have an expert opinion or a backlog of statistics on my own songwriting to give a definitive answer. I can't.There's lots of different ways to get to the same end result - the SONG - the music and lyrics... May the Muse be with you on your journey there...Often, it's true for me that the lyrics come first. I seldom find just melodies on the guitar that come out fully fleshed, and add the lyrics afterward. If I start on the piano, it often happens that the melody will come first, of a piece. The instrument has a lot to do with the order of inspiration. Sometimes. And sometimes the fragment of a conversation, the color of the sky, the image in a dream, has everything to do with where the song begins. My song "Seven Year Ache" began as a long poem, several pages of rambling, and I distilled it down into a lyric. The melody came last.
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