Next to Normal Creative Team
Over on Broadway.com, you can watch a fascinating video interview with the composer and lyricist of an upcoming Broadway musical called Next to Normal, about a woman with various psychological issues undergoing increasingly extreme forms of therapy.
I always find it interesting to get an insight into the creation of things like this, but primarily what fascinates me is how, in this case, they occasionally write lyrics first, and occasionally music first - and either way, it all comes out sounding pretty much the same - a style I’m not a fan of at all. It feels bland and predictable to me. I’m not sure what it is about this kind of music that leads people to either write it or listen to it. I honestly don’t understand.
But whatever it is, it’s not the fault of a songwriting team putting too much emphasis on lyrics, since those songs written music-first sound the same. So, I’m left with the unsettling conclusion that there must be lots of people out there who like this kind of music. The composers themselves must like it. It weirds me out.
That’s fine, I guess. I’ve long accepted that I have strange tastes in entertainment (not sophisticated, necessarily, just weird). I hope that it doesn’t mean that the music I create isn’t appealing to people in the way that it’s appealing to me.