“I Refuse to Try and Reverse Engineer A Hit”: Tim Minchin on His Score for Groundhog Day | Playbill
If his melodic approach sounds complex, it’s only due to the fact that, for Minchin, sound is inextricably linked to lyrics—and Minchin is a wordsmith. “I’m incredibly didactic and lyric heavy,” he says. “It sounds so pretentious, but once you’ve really got into Shakespeare, you really don’t ever want to treat words like, ‘Oh that’ll do.’
“My job is to go, ‘No, no, you’ve got to listen to every word, and once you make that contract with [the audience], you better uphold your end of the bargain. You better always be doing something.”
Indeed, Mr. Minchin always keeps an eye on the thin line between irony (which he isn’t particularly keen on) and satire (which he loves). What helped him understand Phil was an unlikely commonality.
“He learns to be kind and generous and altruistic without expectation of reward,” said Mr. Minchin, an outspoken atheist. “Anything that talks about the meaning of life without the cop-out is attractive to me.”
There’s no such thing as a perfect lyric but there is a sense that you haven’t wasted a syllable; the pursuit of a verse or a chorus that doesn’t waste anything feels exact in a way to me.
