Prosody is a writing technique commonly found in poetry however is often used in songwriting. In a musical context prosody is when musical and/or rhythmic elements relate to the lyrics or narrative of a song. If a lyric contains the word “down” and a descending bass line kicks in that would be an example of prosody. This can be used the emphasise a specific lyric or message that the song contains.
Another writing technique is negative prosody where the music is acting in the opposite way to the lyrics or narrative. This is the reason why you often hear songs that sound upbeat and cheery with a darker meaning. A classic example of negative prosody is ‘Pumped Up Kicks’ by Foster the people, where on first listen you believe the song to be an upbeat summer jam but looking at the lyrics you realise the song is much darker as it is from the perspective of a school shooter. I believe the reasoner for this is to show that although this song is dealing with a very dark subject matter from the perspective of the narrator he sees no issue with what he’s doing.
My band The Joey Bill have used prosody in our song ‘Lillys Lullaby Sweetness’ when in the bridge most of the instrumentation cuts out (including the drums) and the first lyric is “Break this beat to find…”
You can find this in the video below at 20:00 :
Callum Bashford Uni Blog 