A Conversation with Maia Sharp (continued)

PM: Certain lyric writers are mind blowing, some of them work so fast, or those who have like a seemingly endless flow of ideas just coming out of their mouth. Who are some lyricists that have blown your mind in that particular way?

MS: The only one--this is really fun--this is probably going to sound bad--but the only lyricist who worked that fast and then I thought we didn't have to go back and rework it a lot--because with a lot of lyricists where it just flows out, it's not really ready yet. Do you know when I mean?

PM: Right. It's just to get you started, and you go back and change most of it.

MS: Yeah. It came out a little too fast. But there's another angle, that if we think about it for another hour, we can definitely make it a stronger lyric.

PM: Right, find a deeper vein, yeah.

MS: But the only guy who just came out with it, and it was ready, and it was great, and I had nothing to say about it, was Jules Shear.

PM: Really?

MS: Yeah.

PM: He's fast at it and right on the money.

MS: I was writing with Carole King and Jules Shear at one of those songwriting retreats in France.

PM: Holy shit.

MS: Yeah. And we sat down and we had a title, I think it was "Leaving Home," which was what the title ended up being of the song. And we're all kind of working on what the first verse could be, and maybe ten minutes goes by, and Jules says, "Yeah, I have a little something here." And he read it, and it was two full verses, and they were great.

PM: Wow.

MS: We just looked at each other like, "All right, you just saved us a lot of time."

[laughter]

PM: "Uh, yeah, we'll go with that."

MS: Exactly. We had the chorus and another verse to write, I think.

PM: Phew! Amazing. And then on the melody side, are there some people you've worked with who come to mind as having a particularly uncanny gift for a beautiful or an infectious melody?

MS: Well, I've worked with a lot of great melodic writers. I'd have a hard time choosing one or two. I've been really lucky like that.

PM: Do you think there are more of them out there, the people who just have music just flowing out of them, and they just sing you a melody and they blow your find?

MS: Yes, absolutely. I truly believe that lyrics are the hardest part of the process to do well, and take the longest, and therefore deserve the longest amount of time.

PM: Yeah, I agree. Even though as Greg Brown once said to me, he says, "I think people are concentrating on the lyrics too much. Like how about a nice groove?"

MS: Well, maybe he wants to concentrate on the groove because that's what he's listening to, and that's what makes him feel good. But if the lyric is weak, I can't listen to the song, no matter how happening the groove is.

PM: Speaking of groove, I had to go buy your song "The Apology" on iTunes.

MS: Oh, yeah?

PM: It's a great song. You're so dirty when you sit down and play the piano.

MS: [laughs]

PM: You're funky like that.

MS: Dirty... [laughs]

PM: Who co-wrote that?

MS: Michelle White.

PM: I don't know her.

MS: She's Tony Joe White's daughter.

PM: Oh, wow.

MS: Yeah. I came in with the groove, though. The Tony Joe White family are groovy, but I'm the keyboard player. She's groovy, oh, don't get me wrong. She's great. I've known her forever, too. She lives in L.A.  continue

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