5 tips for using humour as a door into depth

The Guzzlers: “Humour creates trust and once you’ve got an audience’s trust, they are more likely to listen to what you have to say.”

Why making listeners laugh can create a more open path towards the deeper and more personal themes within your songs

Irish brother duo The Guzzlers combine folk instrumentation, foot-stomping melodies, and pub-ready storytelling, balancing the humour and high spirits of traditional Irish music with more personal themes of grief, loneliness, and regret. Their debut album, Drinking The Dream, comprises 10 songs they wrote together before relocating from Limerick to Liverpool. Here, they share five tips on using humour to draw listeners into the deeper themes of a song…

Richard Digance on how to write comedy songs

Irish humour has always been a way of life for us, so it’s only natural it slips into our songwriting. From spending time drinking in the local pubs to listening to whatever Irish classics come on the jukebox, the experience itself has taught us that humour isn’t the opposite of depth. Sometimes it’s the doorway into it. When we laugh, we are far more likely to be open to whatever other message is being portrayed. We feel more relaxed and interested as our attention has been initially grabbed in a positive way.

Below is our list of five tips which explain why we feel humour is the songwriting gateway drug into the harrowing theme of human depth:

1. MAKE THEM LAUGH BEFORE YOU MAKE THEM THINK

Nobody wants to hear another artist educate them on the failings and corruption of the world today, no matter how true that it exists. That’s the harsh reality. It shouldn’t stop you from expressing your opinion as an artist and trying to make the world a better place, if that’s your desire – but there’s a way of doing that to get your message across rather than just rambling, and that’s using humour. Humour creates trust, and once you’ve got an audience’s trust, they are more likely to listen to what you have to say.

2. LAUGH AT YOURSELF, NOT AT YOUR AUDIENCE

Nothing connects more to people than an artist saying, “I’m in this mess with you.” If you try to preach, they won’t listen. Be on their level and they will respect you more. Nobody wants to listen to a Mr Know-It-All, do they now? We all spent enough years in school with those types of “teachers” to deserve a lifelong break.

Our debut single, 20 Pints To Cherbourg, was a great song for us to publicly laugh at ourselves for something that’s generally viewed as a very negative thing to happen: losing your job. By doing so, it made the audience more likely to listen to the story and hopefully take some meaning from the depth of it, which is basically not to take life and setbacks too seriously.

The Guzzlers: “Sometimes the more direct and careless lyrics become the most memorable ones.” Photo: John Johnson

3. MAKE LYRICS FUN AND MEMORABLE

Not every lyric you write has to be a mastermind piece of Bob Dylan genius. In fact, sometimes the more direct and careless lyrics become the most memorable ones. Pavement were a great band for doing this. Listen to Stephen Malkmus’ lyrics on a song he wrote and it will make you realise there’s no point spending another hour trying to be clever and write the next verse. Just whack out whatever comes to mind and if it sounds good, leave it in. Most of the time. It doesn’t matter if it makes any sense or not.

4. NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO BE DEPRESSED

It’s quite simple: it’s natural for humans to want to be happy. So, give them what they want! Of course, people are attracted to the dark side of life and depth too, but the two things can co-exist. There’s enough going on out there to give someone a reason to be unhappy and maybe a good question is, should your music be another one of these things or can it be the opposite and bring some joy? By doing so, it can be the open door to the real message you want to portray in the song.

5. TURN ORDINARY PEOPLE INTO CHARACTERS

On our second single, The Drunken Tales Of Gerry MacLean, we wrote about a fictional character and people have asked us ever since its release, “Is he real?” Although his name is made up, the reality is that he is real and more likely in every pub you go to. Getting into fist fights, being chased by the police, and escaping your home on the run are all dark moments if you were to go through them in real life. But the humour in how the story is told invites the listener to be curious and to hear what’s going on. Writing the story about characters people see every day in real life, on top of this, causes humour to lead the audience into that door of depth – with a friendly helping hand.

Guzzlers debut album Drinking The Dream is released on 6 November via The Campus Label. Find out more via the band’s linktr.ee

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.