Your red elementary school grammar book likely described a pronoun to you as a word that takes the place of a noun. The pronoun spares us from the repetition of the noun over and over again, the sort of childlike speak we would engage in if our language lacked the linguistic equivalent of the pointing finger.  For songwriters, the pronoun often gives the singer a supple vowel to sing in place of the consonant-rich proper noun:  the long IIIII in "I", the OOOO in "you", the EEEEE in he/she/me.  What's not to like about a pronoun?!  More than a stand-in (since pronouns are capable of great action), we can think of them as actors.  When the names have been changed to protect the innocent, in trots the pronoun to save the day. 

I like to think of the personal pronouns as “professional nouns.”  A pro makes the big bucks because, if cast properly, the pro brings people back to the song time and time again like the box-office attraction actor. Imagine if Billy Joel had written “Doreen’s Only a Woman to Me”, or AC-DC belted the rock anthem “Shelly Shook Me All Night Long.”  Unless you had a close connection to a Doreen or a Shelly, you might be somewhat less connected to songs that ultimately starred a second person pronoun (“you”) in the title roles.  This is not to say that proper names can’t make for great songs.  Some of your favorite songs may be named for people.  The Allman Brothers’ “Melissa,” Train’s “Meet Virginia,” and Eric Clapton’s “Layla” offer three famously successful examples.  When we write from intensely personal perspectives, we seek the moments and places where our experience touches the universal.  Pronouns afford us a shared experience with our audience that proper nouns often cannot.

We as songwriters, then, not only write the scripts; we cast the movies and the plays ourselves.  Mis-casting the title roles can rob a song of intimacy and emotional power.  Casting properly can give a song life beyond our imagining.

Dramatis Personae:  Your Personal Pronouns
singular subject / object                 plural subject/object
1st           I                         me                               we         us
2nd        You                    you                               you        you
3rd        He/she/it         him/her/it                        they        them

The majority of songs rely upon an I-you relationship to tell a story.

Whether we stand in the dreaming stages or we find ourselves close to a draft of the song, casting the piece will establish the point of view and help raise or answer many of the questions we'll need in order to finish the song.  We can always change our minds later, but taking a moment away from the details of the story to decide which characters will convey the story can often clarify the final scenes still to be written.  In any casting session, a writer and director might give a screen test to the actors they’re considering for a part.  Try this with an as-yet unfinished song of your own.  How does the song change in intimacy, power, or scope when she reads for the starring role as opposed to when an I reads for the part?  Mary Chapin Carpenter wrote the ironic song of female empowerment “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her.”  Carrie Underwood sang the Josh Kear/Chris Tomkins hit “Before He Cheats.”

Let’s look at the former American Idol’s retaliation hit from 2008:

"Before He Cheats"
© Josh Kear / Chris Tompkins, 2008

"Right now he's probably slow dancing with a bleach blonde tramp,
and she's probably getting frisky..."

So the song begins.  (In observance of legal cases right now untangling the unauthorized publishing of complete lyrics and with great respect to the talented writers themselves, we will not re-print the lyrics here without permission.  Click on the link to download the mp3 and make them each around a nickel!)  The song achieves its cinematic effect largely because of its choice of pronouns.  The songwriters have cast the tale with I – he/she.  The fourth character in the song is the implied “you” the speaker is addressing.  She is mad, and she’s confessing her sins and celebrating her vengeance to a trusted listener.  We, the audience, assume the role of the implied you.  She’s telling us!  We feel sorry for lovely Carrie Underwood, frankly can’t imagine the fool who would cheat on her, and are pretty excited to suddenly be her pal.  The writers win our allegiance to the narrator early on.  And the only detail they give her is the attitude from which she speaks.  The I has a wry sense of humor, a hot-blooded sense of irony, and a lot of nerve.  If any of us have ever been cheated on, she lets us feel the satisfaction of smashing the guy’s headlights without concern for the misdemeanor itself.  So we get two characters to identify with, thus broadening the song’s appeal.

If this song relied upon an I – you relationship, we would still likely empathize with the speaker’s plight, but there would be very little room for irony or humor. All the wonderful speculation of the verses—the lines that begin with “probably…” as she imagines in jealous, obsessively vivid detail the bad things he’s doing—might come off as the rants of a stalker. Instead of a rollicking dismissal of a cheater, the song would detail with deathly seriousness the destruction of a relationship.  That can make and has made for some successful and moving songs in the past (Loretta Lynn’s spelling of “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” anyone?), but it might not have become the uptempo radio hit and Grammy winner for song of the year.

The choice of pronouns allows the writer to control some measure of the emotional distance in the piece.  Sometimes we need to be up close in tight focus; other times some distance allows for human subtlety to win the day.  Distance creates space where humor, anger, sadness, and a host of other emotions can exist.

Number 24 in Your Programs, Number One in Your Hearts:  The Antecedent
There is a reason that many of the movies about adolescence involve a formulaic, rag-tag collection of characters, each distinct from one another.  Our ability to immediately recognize those broad differences makes the interaction meaningful.  If we had a hard time telling who was who, meaning gets fogged like the glasses of one, well, of the brainier characters.  John Hughes’ brilliant 1985 hit The Breakfast Club explored these broad stereotypes directly and thematically.  Random events bring each kid to detention, and his or her distinct membership creates the energy that drives the narrative among the jock, the geek, the hoodlum, the princess, and the freak.  We have no trouble keeping them straight when we see them.  But if I refer to “he” or “she,” you’d need to know details to understand which member I mean.  As writers we must establish and maintain a clear, syntactical relationship between the pronoun and its antecedent (the word to which it refers).  We do this through proximity and agreement (in number and in case).  Pronouns look like silhouettes on their own; how we link them to detail gives them features and personality.  And how we bring the vital, characterizing details to our lyrics is something we explore in THE ROOTS at The Songwriting School of Los Angeles. 

Exercise: Revising By Re-Casting the Movie of Your Song
Take a draft of one of your own songs and re-cast one or more pronouns.
For instance, take an I-you song and make it I-he/she song.  Or take an I-you song and put it completely in third person:  he-she.  What is gained?  What is lost?  What details or lines have to change to make the new cast work?  What changes might prove beneficial to the song’s story?  What changes eliminate parts the song can ill-afford to lose? What information can't we know because of the new point of view?  How does that change the drama of the conflict or our sympathies?
The answers to those questions will help you decide if the original cast was well-conceived or if some fresh blood might give the song more vitality.

© Rob Seals, 2009 for The Songwriting School of Los Angeles