In my songwriting, I certainly think about melody, and I try to make sure that the music in my songs is engaging and matches what the song is trying to convey. But at heart I’m really a lyrics person. I love language – I love how the words sound, and how tight meter can allow the lyrics to shine. I love alliteration, and finding exactly the right – but maybe unexpected – word, and the magic of internal rhyme. My songs, even the non-narrative ones, are essentially stories, and so I spend a lot of time making sure that the words I use to tell those stories are the right ones. And when I listen to songs I am often won over by the lyrics. But today I had two different experiences of how central the melody is to a good song. While running errands I was listening to almost-but-not-quite-folk-music station WUMB. As I was approaching the post office, I was completely engaged by the musical intro to a song and the melody it suggested. I didn’t know the song, but it felt familiar, and like one I knew I’d love. When the lyrics started I was surprised to discover that it was basically a not-especially-innovative love song. But the melody was so enjoyable that it didn’t matter much. The second song that caught my attention came slightly later. I noticed it because, although there seemed to be some interesting lyric lines, it had the most uninteresting melody I could imagine. The entire verse melody seemed to consist of the first five notes in the scale, with never more than a whole step between them. I think there were a couple verses before we got to a chorus, and by then I was paying rapt attention because the verses were so musically boring that I figured the chorus would have to break out of the rut and have a soaring interval or something rhythmically interesting. But no; it was more of the same thing, and barely distinguishable from the verse melody. I felt like I was getting two different lessons in the same thing: melody matters. Not that I didn’t know that deep in my bones – the songs I love most have a great music and wonderful lyrics. But it was interesting to see how much a good melody could rescue an uninteresting story, and how much a boring melody could undermine what might have otherwise been an interesting song.