Why does lining up the stress of the text and the music matter for prosody in songwriting? Two reasons:
- A word or sentence that has the stresses badly placed will sound odd or strained.
- A multi-syllable word that gets mis-accented will be harder to understand.
Summer in the City, performed by The Lovin’ Spoonful, gives you an example of the impact of mis-accented syllables. Generally, the lyrics are excellent.
However, the line, “despite the heat it will be all right” has an issue. The word “despite” has the accent on the first syllable, rather than the second where it belongs.
Misplacing the accent on this word makes it sound funny. Also, it makes it harder to understand when hearing the song without a lyric sheet.
However, it would break up the chorus’ rhythmic motif to shift the word backward in time half a beat. Also, it would place “de-” on an off-beat and “-spite” on a beat. This probably explains why “despite” has a misplaced accent.