Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen Talk Lyrics | Louder - video Dailymotion

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1/4/2025

Exclusive: Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen, whose debut Smith/Kotzen album is out now, chat about songwriting and lyrics.

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00:00The song I want to stay kind of started just with...

00:10Sort of vibe, obviously going to be a bit of a band.

00:14Yeah, I remember that song, the chorus melody was driving me nuts.

00:20Because you had that part and I had the chorus and that melody I didn't know what to sing there.

00:26I kept waking up every day with that...

00:30I guess you made me crazy.

00:34One good time, maybe I got lazy.

00:43I didn't know what to sing there, you know, it took forever.

00:46But I think some of the stuff, the lyrics is what we probably spent the most time on, isn't it?

00:50Yeah, we sat for hours here.

00:52I mean, lyrics are important.

00:55When I was a kid growing up, I didn't know what Ian Gilliam was singing, Highway Star.

01:03But it just sounded great.

01:05So sometimes the lyrics just have to sound good.

01:08But I think if you dig deeper, you want them to mean something.

01:11And they've got to sing good as well, phonetically.

01:15Some words just don't sing.

01:17And when people say the lyrics are that...

01:19When a singer says this song has got great lyrics,

01:21they probably mean they can really get their voice around it.

01:25And it just makes it easy to sing.

01:27That's a great point.

01:28It is twofold because you have lyrics in a story that reads well.

01:33So you read it.

01:34However, how it sings is really a big part of why a lyric gets written in a certain way.

01:41It's because it sings great songs.

01:43Even Sinatra and all that.

01:45Lots of vowels and stuff like that.

01:50Also, when we're writing with that, say, I Want to Stay.

01:55You're searching.

01:57You've got the chords.

01:58You can hear the melody.

01:59And then, I Want to Stay, for some reason, you come up with a title.

02:04And then you have to work around that and make it make sense.

02:08Because what comes to you is often what you stick with.

02:13And you write a song around that.

02:16The great thing about Amazon and Bounce Off is rituals.

02:19Say, I Want to Stay.

02:20What was that you sang there?

02:22Okay, that sounded good.

02:23Just keep that and work around it.

02:26That happened in, remember, Solar Fire.

02:29And I remember you sitting there and saying,

02:31Oh, that sounds good.

02:32I had a rough sketch of a vocal on there.

02:35And you said, Oh, Solar Fire.

02:38That's interesting.

02:39And I said, What?

02:40Where did you come up with that?

02:41And you actually said, Oh, I thought that's what you were saying.

02:44And I'm like, No, but I could be saying that.

02:46What does it mean?

02:47You're sort of scatting.

02:48And then now and again, Solar Fire.

02:51And then, so, how do you make it sound great?

02:54You know that?

02:55Solar Fire.

02:56Whatever.

02:57That's a great, really strong title or something.

02:59How do you make sense out of that?

03:02So then the song was about, I thought,

03:04we'll make it about something that's burning hot and glowing brightly.

03:08When you're in the prime of your life, you're on stage,

03:10and you're having a great time in your life, really.

03:14Just when you're at your peak.

03:16Solar Fire.

03:17You're burning.

03:18You're burning.

03:20That was the spirit of that song.

03:22That's great.

03:23So he heard something.

03:24I was just hearing the melody and the rhythm,

03:26and he actually heard a lyric that I wasn't even saying.

03:29But then once we established that, we wrote a song around it.

03:32So these songs come in all different ways.

03:35Yeah, they just seem to be, you sort of pull them out of the air.

03:38They just come to you.

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