Words and Lyrics

Spring inspiration from Gregg Allman and Martin Luther King

As Spring has made its debut in NYC, and its various bizarre turns of 30-degree temperature drops on what were first sunny days of relief, I have been obsessed with the significance of words and lyrics, and the way they tend to ring hollow so far this year. If words are not backed up by our actions they bear no weight. Lyrics must also be backed by music, or they are just poems and not songs. I also like to think of my work here on Sub Stack and publishing my own words and stories as my own small act of skin in the game.

I may be a Michigander by birth and a New Yorker by migration, but in my heart I’m just another American musician who is looking for the right words to add to the music and a way to reach some souls with the stories I need to tell. Along the way, Ive been lucky enough to craft some songs that people actually want to hear.

I have also had the good fortune of co-writing with some of my musical heroes over the last couple of decades. Gregg Allman was a close collaborator for a few of those years and we tried to forge some new works for his legendary catalog together, beginning back in 2014. At the time he was coming out of a slump of severe and prolonged songwriter’s block. Gregg was such an iconic vocalist that sometimes his gifts as a songwriter got overshadowed by his ability to deliver the lyric, or by the glorious improvisational onslaught of his brother Duane’s epic band. It was hard to stay focused and Gregg was careful and patient with how he shared music with the world.

Gregg Allman was also obsessed with the measured power and precision of words, in both their craft and delivery. This would even extend to his conversations and interviews in the press. I will paraphrase, but he would often say “mankind invented one thing that is more powerful than the atom bomb, words” I think about this quote so often these days that it’s become a kind of mantra. What do we have when words lose all of their power? And how does this affect the power of our lyrics as songwriters and performers? How do we maintain the ability to effect change and move listeners with the lyrics if people are processing hollow and false words and messages on a daily basis in their lives and online?

Perhaps it’s our current discourse and its dissociation from the meaning in our words and lyrics that has helped to take the sting out of a song and its lack of impact on the wider culture. Every day I search the horizon for a new “All You Need is Love” or “What’s Going On” (the songs of the 60s) …. let alone “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” or “Sweet Dreams” (the 80s radio hits of my youth). Those songs were what the crass radio programmers and corporate demographic marketers of the 80s/90s called “crossover hits”. They were also brilliant songs that spoke to our collective humanity.

While listening to his Siri player in the bath the other night my 8-year-old son took a break from Kids Bop and the latest pop hits to make a request. He called out for the recording of Martin Luther King’s “I Had a Dream” Speech on the DC national mall in 1963. As MLK’s rich baritone rang out across the bathroom tiles from the tiny speaker, I watched my son concentrate in the bubble bath, he started mouthing the words in certain spots, he was also working on the cadence and delivery. MLK sang when he spoke, like the great preachers of his era, blurring the lines between music and speech. This was not proselytizing or selling, he was telling the truth to all of humanity, and he was telling a story with a unique voice to get it across all barriers and into the hearts of a massive crowd in a turbulent time.

My son played the track a few times, sitting with it and at times seeking to emulate it, or “singing along”. A speech is not music per se, but his words and delivery were music. To my youngest son, it was profound music worth hearing over and over. It’s also worth noting that he is learning about the civil rights movement not only in his home, but in his public school in NYC. The curriculum there is still teaching our countries history and the unvarnished truth of how these speeches came to be and the societal ills that needed to be addressed on that particular summer day in 1963.

The speeches of Martin Luther King are infused with words to articulate our best intentions, hopes, dreams, and aspirations. They also have American moxie, fight and crucially, swing. He tells our story with a beat. The scrappy reality of the American story is pure insanity on paper, twisting from bliss to anguish, brutal conquest to utopian revelation. In the digital age it is all set to hyper speed. And we are all missing each other now, unable to find that song we can all sing, or that person who can speak to what and who we want to be as a collective.

So, the lyrics like the words we hear daily, are lost, while the music now exists in vacuums, sub genres and subgroups of artists and followings like never before. These subgroups only speak to their flock and mostly to the converted. And though great music is happening it is trapped in silos of musical consumption, brand identity, and online virality. The streaming services take us farther down our own private rabbit holes, sometimes even diverting us to AI created ghost tracks that are tailored to your “preferred” genres. The streamers are taking the entire creative medium and its monetization and turning it into a hollow video game of click bait feels and artificial algorithms.

Today I just wanted to remind everyone here that I am still thinking all the time about the power of words and lyrics and that I believe in us, against all odds, to find our way back to our true beliefs with these tools at hand. Music has always been the only religion that made any sense to me. Its best expressions and historic works are ultimately devoid of genre, marketing ploys, and flashy costumes and set pieces. Great music that lasts is always inclusive and never exclusive. It can be a safe harbor and a refuge, but it can also kick your ass and serve as a spiritual guide to remind you what is right.

The only thing I know for sure, is if we don’t find the meaning and gravity of our words and lyrics and practice that at every level of our arts and in our society, our actions will be hollow and in the end they won’t matter. Americans are probably the world’s most influential storytellers of perhaps the last 100 years. We are historically also one of civilizations rare examples of how diverse people can collaborate and improve as a collective and then spread that message to the entire world. If we don’t find our soul, the power of our words and lyrics, and a way to embrace them together as a collective community, we will lose our way for good. Long live the power of words and lyrics, our greatest tool in the search for peace and truth. I can’t wait to hear what comes next; I’m still listening…

Scott Sharrard

NYC

April 2025

A note that brings all the threads of this piece together, here are some links to Gregg Allman’s song about Martin Luther King “God Rest His Soul”

And a great piece on Gregg Allman and his song “God Rest His Soul” by Alan Paul on sub stack

God Rest His Soul. Remembering MLK - and Gregg Allman

“God Rest His Soul”