Dear Katy, This one is for Nick: I just read an old article which said that you listen to very different music such as German 60s songs, too. Well, I guess the lyrics are quite an important thing of a song and I'm not sure if I always get the meaning of your lyrics right, but at least I do understand a lot of it. So my question is: When you listen to a song which is not sung in english what is the most important thing for you? Do you focus on the melody, the technical production or does the atmosphere tip the balance? Or do you even make an effort to find out what they're singing about? Thanks and kind regards, Silke

"Ok, I confess, most music I listen to is actually in the English language, aside from opera and the occasional Kraftwerk album...lyrics an enormously important art of any song. Whilst you can have the greatest melody in the world, which will have an undeniable emotional effect upon listeners, it is
the lyric that makes a song ultimately relatable. Having said that, some of my favorite lyrics are either incredibly simple or surreal and abstract. It really depends upon the piece of music - you try to match the mood and capture the feeling with the sentiment of what is being said in the words.

There are , of course, many criteria to getting the right lyric, which also include rhyming scheme, structure, the sound of the words themselves and simply making something memorable that people connect with. NR"