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You already know I enjoy rewriting song lyrics: sometimes tweaking them just a bit to better fit the context of my script, sometimes adding an entire verse to the song.

That is, until I sit down to do it.

Then I hate it.

And I hate myself, and nothing seems to fit, and I listen to the originals over and over again and wonder how in the world was the original lyricist able to create something so amazing?

So while I can sometimes work through this process, other times it helps to switch gears and do something else instead:

Thinking in pictures

What ‘picture’ is the original verse showing me? What is the scene? What is the setting, the main character?

Who or what is in focus? What is on the edge of the photo, or what is blurry?

I want to stay within the range of the original lens – that’s key for maintaining cohesion so that the new stanza fits into its surroundings.

But I don’t want to repeat the exact same content as the original material.

So I zoom in on another point in the same photo.

A related element, a fragment that is referenced in the original – taking that and expanding it somehow.

A couple months ago I was thinking over the weeks leading up to Easter and writing up music suggestions for my church.

I pulled up the classic 1989 song “Via Dolorosa” written by Billy Sprague and recorded by Sandi Patty.

This is a song I grew up listening to: it’s a few years older than I am and my mom has performed it at church in the past. As my voice matured it’s made an appearance in my solo performances (along with “Think of Me” from Phantom of the Opera)…in my car. Driving down the freeway. You know, the big stage.

It’s so passionate, it’s so heartfelt, and it tells the story of Jesus carrying His cross in a poignant and focused way. Unlike so many other songs that focus on doctrinal truth only, this one tells a story and invites us to that dusty street and a Nazarene stumbling under the weight of His cross.

But to me, there’s only one thing missing from this song: it’s not long enough. I love how the original track switched to Spanish after the first chorus, but I do wish it had another narrative section.

So, me being me…

The original song follows this structure:

Verse 1
Verse 2
Chorus 1
Verse 1 (Spanish)
Verse 2 (Spanish)
Bridge
Chorus 2

Analysis: Looking at the picture

Here are the original opening lyrics that I’ll be creating a parallel to:

He was bleeding from a beating –
There were stripes upon His back
And He wore a crown upon his head
And He bore with every step
The scorn of those of those
Who cried out for his death

structure

The first three lines are descriptive of the physical reality of the moment – this is our setting. Jesus is in physical agony, He’s bleeding, He’s wounded, and He’s wearing a crown of thorns. All factual from Scripture.

The next three lines are descriptive of the spiritual reality of that moment – here the lyricist draws meaning from the picture and gives us a focal point. The blood, the scars, the crown, all are descriptive, but the writer is choosing to give more wordcount and thus greater wight to the rejection that our Lord was facing.

And if we look back to Verse 1, we see it’s purely descriptive – it’s opening the scene for us.

So there’s a progression:

Verse 1 is setting
Verse 2 is half and half: setting first and spiritual following

So the cultural framework of the song allows some flexibility for Verse 3: follow the pattern of Verse 2 or extend the progression further into the doctrinal weight of this snippet of the Good Friday story.

	Structure
Verse 1	Setting/storytelling
Verse 2	Half setting, half spiritual
Verse 3 (our checklist)	Partial setting/storytelling, leans towards spiritual/doctrinal

Themes

Both Verse 1 and Verse two reference weight/pressure: “the crowd pressed in to see” and “and he bore with every step / the scorn”. Neither verse references Jesus under the weight of His cross, and we know from John 19 that Jesus carried His cross and Matthew & Luke record that guards compelled Simon of Cyrene to carry it for him. Tradition assumes that the weight was too much for Jesus’ drained physical condition after the horror of a Roman flogging and he likely fell under His burden.

So we add to the list: reference weight, and refer to Him carrying His cross.

	Theme: weight
Verse 1	“Pressed in to see”
Verse 2	“And He bore with every step / the scorn”
Verse 3 (our checklist)	Carrying the Cross

Characters

We also see people referenced. In Verse 1 they’re just “a crowd”. In Verse 2 they’re “those who cried out for His death”. It’s getting closer, more personal.

Here is where I make a significant creative decision for this song. I’m exploring the theme of abandonment – the negative space of the characters who are missing.

Who else was involved in this scene? Or better yet, who wasn’t there? His disciples. In fact, Peter had betrayed Him three times the night before.

	Characters
Verse 1	Crowd
Verse 2	“Those who cried out for His death”
Verse 3 (our checklist)	Missing: disciples

Mapping it out

Organizing these notes into a matrix for the yet-unwritten Verse 3 might look something like this:

	Structure	Theme: weight	Characters
Verse 1	Setting/storytelling	“Pressed in to see”	Crowd
Verse 2	Half setting, half spiritual	“And He bore with every step / the scorn”	“Those who cried out for His death”
Verse 3 (our checklist)	Partial setting/storytelling, leans towards spiritual/doctrinal	Carrying the cross	Missing: disciples

So then it’s a matter of searching for a theme for the third verse, and I chose abandonment: suffering alone.

Looking ahead to the account of the Crucifixion itself, we see Jesus cry out “My God, why have You forsaken Me?”. The most personal relationship of all has been broken. Jesus carries the weight of His Father’s abandonment.

And here is a eureka moment as a flame of realization sears through the mind. (Best part of the creative process.)

Themes converge. The new grafts smoothly with the old. They’ve been constructed silently in parallel and now they collide into one.

The theme of burden/weight and the theme of abandonment. Jesus is carrying the weight of the cross (physical), the weight of God’s wrath (spiritual) all at the same time as He is also abandoned by His Father.

New Lyrics

Friends betrayed Him, and denied Him
He alone faced the mob
Even God, in His heaven, turned away
So Jesus bore alone his cross
And the weight of the Almighty’s holy wrath

Now, because I’m adding just one verse, if I was using the original performance track, I could replace either the first or second Spanish verse with my new one. But with live accompaniment, I could instead alter the structure to:

Verse 1
Verse 2
Chorus 1
Verse 3
Bridge
Chorus 2]

And if I wrote a 4th verse to truly parallel the original song’s structure, I could continue the progression and make the 4th one entirely about weight of sin.

All put together

Down the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem that day
The soldiers tried to clear the narrow street
But the crowd pressed in to see
A man condemned to die on Calvary.

He was bleeding from a beating
– there were stripes upon His back
And He wore a crown of thorns upon his head
And He bore with every step
The scorn of those who cried out for his death.

Down the Via Dolorosa
Called the Way of Suffering
Like a lamb came the Messiah
Christ the King
But He chose to walk that road
Out of His love for you and me
Down the Via Dolorosa
All the way to Calvary.

Friends betrayed Him, and denied Him
He alone faced the mob
Even God, in His heaven, turned away
So Jesus bore alone his cross
And the weight of the Almighty’s holy wrath

Have you ever rewritten song lyrics? What’s your process? What works and what doesn’t? I’d love to hear! Let me know at designorganizecreate@gmail.com

Until one day, Man and Woman chose their own will over the will of God. And darkness covered over the land. A Darkness of separation, of lost communion, of disgrace, of sin. Thorns and thistles infested the earth. Man toiled by the sweat of his brow to produce food. Woman gave birth to children in agony. Mankind fought with one another, murdered one another, and in the end died themselves.

So hopefully by now you’ve been to Brainstorm Central: 15 Concepts and 50 Components for the effects and tactics you can use to tell your story most effectively.

Now let’s see how it can actually work, in a real Christmas production I put together in 2017, called Light out of Darkness. I put the bulk of the program together in the spring, then started production in earnest in late August.

Here’s how the script came together:

Quick Summary

I broke down Light Out of Darkness into the following sections:

1. Paradise Lost (“Let there be light”; God’s creation and Man’s sin that cast the world into darkness. A summary of the Old Testament, leading up to the events of Christmas)
2. The Dawn is Come (Mary’s fears, faith & her response to the angel’s announcement)
3. Led by the Light (the birth of Jesus, and Joseph’s fears and his response of faith)
4. Light of the World (the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, and our response of faith)
5. The Kingdom of Our Lord (triumphant praise to the King who conquered darkness forever)

Repeated components

I believe in purposeful repetition-with-variety. Repetition helps you organize the structure of the production, and creates auditory tags that your audience will recognize. As we become an increasingly visual society, it’s important to use a strong structure in this type of auditory-based production, to avoid losing the audience.

How I did it:
I opened each of the three middle sections (Mary, Joseph & the Cross) with one of the three stanzas of “O Holy Night”, sung by a male quartet with a piano backdrop.

There were four special numbers, one for each major section (the last section was a two-minute closing epilogue). The first and last were group special music, to emphasize the community of creation at the beginning, and our united response of praise to our Savior at the end. The two others were solos, and sung from the perspective of Mary and Joseph.

Section 1 (Creation/Paradise Lost): “Creation Song” by Fernando Ortega
Section 2 (Mary/The Dawn is Come): “Magnificat” by Keith & Kristin Getty
Section 3 (Joseph/Led by the Light): “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” by Casting Crowns
Section 4 (Cross/Light of the World): “Let There Be Light” by Point of Grace
Section 5 (Triumph/The Kingdom of Our Lord): no special music

Two actors read Mary and Joseph’s monologues from our sound booth in the back (this gave the effect of the audience listening to their inmost thoughts). We left the stage empty and dimmed the lights, and projected the words MARY and JOSEPH on the screened, in scratched white block letters on a dark background.

I used layered speaking to communicate the six days of Creation at the beginning, and again at the end to create a “cacophony of praise”, inspired by the scene in Revelation 4:

We avoided chaos by carefully timing it and coordinating the volumes of the participants’ voices, so the effect was of power under control.

Power Clusters

In any production, there should be a few moments that you do your best to create magic. I call these Power Clusters– a blend of multiple visual and auditory components in quick succession. With the crew size I had (and with the desire to make this a ‘minimalist’ production) it would have been far too difficult to carry this complexity throughout an entire production. So I choreographed just a few moments as special effects at key points.

For example, at the end of our prologue, we’ve hinted at the prophecies of a Deliverer, but are creating a sense of despair at Israel’s repeated rebellion, before transitioning to an upswing of hope:

Okay, let’s break this down. I’m creating a sense of despair, sadness, and suspense, and end with hope. And this section takes only about a minute out of the whole 45-minute production!

Visual: we’re dimming the lights (to complete darkness). The participants (six to eight people) leave their posts in the lineup of mics and drift back to their seats further back on the platform. The screens show a succession of phrases from Psalm 2, and I even mixed up the fonts and timing a bit so that “…against the Lord” is subtly emphasized. The lights then come up to bright again, once the last line is spoken.

Auditory: I found an online clip of someone singing a Psalm of Lament in Hebrew. It had just the sound to match the tone of the moment, and the actual words they are singing are from another, relevant Psalm (so there’s internal integrity; it’s not just some random thing I’m using because it “sounds cool”). The last line is spoken from the back, giving it a narrator/voice-from-above effect.

Surprises

I see surprises as dashes of spice in a production – they’re unexpected, memorable, and when used correctly, enhance the overall flavor of the production. Use them sparingly – you don’t want your production to seem gimmicky!

How I did this: At one point, an actor interrupted the narrative by hollering from the back of the room, jerking the audience out of the complacency of narrative, into a here-and-now action:

Or at another part – Joseph is waiting outside the stable as Mary is in labor. Towards the end of his monologue, he slowly begins to realize the weight of Messiah’s mission:

Playing a clip of a baby crying again took this moment and made it a semi-reality for the people in attendance.

The script took weeks to put together, made up of a lot of writing sessions in a local coffee shop (just like right now, actually!) And let me tell you, all the hours of wrestling with the words and typing out Scripture and listening to hours of music in search of just the right songs was 100% worth it. I’ll never forget the feeling of standing (too antsy to sit) in the back of a darkened sanctuary while eternal words of truth that I had spent months packaging were presented to a captivated audience.

I think when we are creative in our giftings – whether it’s writing, or singing, or painting, or coordinating, or whatever it might be – that we are acting in the image of God, an image that He has imprinted on us. Is it any wonder it is so fulfilling?

Tag: how i did it

Rewriting Song Lyrics: Via Dolorosa