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Elements of a Lyrics
In a recent survey of publishers , the number one most important factor in hiring a new staff writer was the strength of the writers lyrics. Becoming a better and more versatile lyricst is top priority when it comes to writing cuttable songs. Alot of lyric samples will appear in this chapter unless notited, they arent from real songs and serve only to illustrate the less.
Different Lyrical Styles
Different kinds of songs require different lyricsl styles to complement them. Your background, age ,keexperiences, or education may give you a head start in some styles , but dont let that stop you from becoming adept at lyric genres whith which you have had limited experience. Just as an actor can learn an accent or develop a character for a movie part, you can learn a new lyrical style and expand the kinds of songs you are capable of writing.
Pop Lyrics
Modern pop lyrics are usually either trendy or timeless.last years slang will do you as much goo as a parir of parachute pants. If you dont know what parachute pants are they were a form of clothing that was extremely popular for about a year ( or fifteen minutes, depending on where you lived ( and then , quite suddenly , no one would be caught dead in them.
Trendy lyrics aim at the teen market ( which buys the most CDs and has the newest collest slang terms(. Examples of trendy lyrics include the avril lavigne song "sk8er Boi" or, for its time . The beach Boys classsic" I get Around.".
Lyrics in the timeless style must not only transcend barriers of time but also economoic status, ehtnicity, and geography. Tough ? Yes ! Worth it ? You bet ! a Timeless song can keep royalty checks coming for the rest of your life and behond. A list of timeless lyrics might include "unforgetable," " Evergreen," "Crazy," and "freebird." Simple legance and natrual flow define the timeless lyric.
Pop lyrics can be about most subjects, but love and relationships are the all time big sellers. A pop lyric should be accessible to a large market so , aside from the newest "teenspeak," try to avoid language thats regionally or demographically specific.
Rock and Alt
A good rock lyric is emotionally charge, dynamic, and forceful. Rock is about engergy, so think powerful , think active, think passionate, and rock on ! General rock topics include feeling boxed in , rebellion, wanting to have fun , passion, comeuppance, and angst or depression. Most rock lyrics have a tight, rhythmic meter and are easy to flllow. This doent mean writing for third graders, it means getting to the point.
Alt songs may be deeper , moodier, or more meditative and cover a broader ranger of subjects in addtion to the general rock toipics. In rock or alt, an uptempo danceable songs or a love ball that isnt too wimpy will uusually be where the money is.
Country Music
Country songwriting has expanded to include other musical forms. It’s the level of lyric writing and storytelling that sets country apart. Many great country songs have been based on stories the songwriter heard as a child from family or friends. Established country songwriters also recommend reading short stories and watching movies, sitcoms, talk shows, or news stories to get story ideas.
Modern country lyrics cover many topics, so theres no need to start writing stories about cows and shiskey and cheating spouses; Nashville has more than enough of those already. Hallmarks of a modern country lyric are conversational tone, a sense of humor, and reinforcement of basic values like hard work, faight, and honesty.
Jazz and Rap
While numerous and wonderful expections occur, jazz is usually more about the melody and the sound of the words than the actual lyric. NOt that you cant have a great lyric in a jazz song, but make the melody and meter top priority . Pay careful attention to vowel sounds in a jazz song , but make the melody and meter top oriority. Pay careful attention to vowel sounds in a jazz lyric. Jazz treats the voice like an instrument and vowels influence the tone of the voice.
Because of its droning , nonstandard melodic forms, rap requires very close atttention to meter and rhyme. The rhythm of the lyrics carries the song along. INstead of melodic / lyrics prodody, try finding metric/ lyric prosidy. in rap they lyric is the song, so make it tight and itneresting and be extremle careful in your words choices. If you’re serous about writing rap, you may wish to study the different lyric styles of the East and West coast rappers as well as other sub genres.
Targeting Your Market
When writing for specific market, whether it’s country, pop , or Bolivian folk music , the choices you make in word usage, syntax, and grammar can affect your success as much as your storytelling and melodic skills. Paying attention to every line, every word of your song, as well as the overall flow and style , can bring rich rewards. Ignoring these things can assure you a permanent place as the best songwriter in the whole produce department, maybe even the whole grocery store.
Vocabulary Choices
An important choice faced frequently by songwriters is picking exactly the right word to fill a spot. Colorful words can help a lyric stand out and make a song more vivid, but make sure to use words that are understandable to your target market and are appropriate to the song. For instance, some publishers tend to shy away from songs with words like "cogitate," "fuchsia," and " Australopithecus." Instead, try " think," " pink , " and "missing link." Use words that are natural to the kind of person who would sing or listen to your song.
If you are not sure the listener will understand a certain word, the way in which you use it may help explain it. aMany people ditn know the true meaning of the word "ironic" when Alanis Morissettes’s song of the same title came out. In the song "Ironic," Morissette writes about situations with the question of whether they were ironic and further reinforces the explanation by the use of simile (its like . . . ) and metaphor (its a . . . ) in the B section.
Colloquialisms and vernacular
Colloquialisms are common sayings with an informal tone. Vernacular is an informal mode of speech. Both are used frequently and successfully in songs. "I fall to peices, " God only knows, " and " Somethin in the water" are all song hooks made from colloquialism. Vernacular speech is particular useful in a song where a conversational feel is needed.
Syntax and Grammar
Used Well, "bad English" can make for a great song. You may come under fire from your mother or the English teacher / amateur songwriter down at the local songwriters association, who insists that, "Proper grammar and syntax are the building blocks aof any good songs.. " Thank them for their advice and politely ingnore it. Look at the following line: " Although i have made repeated attempts, I cannont obtain any gratification whatsoever."
Technically correct? Yes. Does it read like a hit lyrics ? No ! It just sits there. It feels stuffy and old. However, if the line is made more converstaiotnal with a double negative, and some d=redundancy is added for dramatic effect, the restuls are golden you get the hook to :Satisfaaction" by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
Now, take the line "We shall not ritre until the sunrises." It just doesnt have the punch of the Garth Brooks classic Aint goin down til the sun comes up.l Though there are errors made in grammar aint. diction goin, and it ends with gasp! a prepisition the line has a converstational tone thats approopirate to the song, a catchy rhythm and a great contrast between up and down.
What matters is that your song is authentic to its genre, that the language feels natural , and that you get your point across to the listener as precisely as possible. Use bad English if, and only if, it makes your song better. If it does, use it whithout guilt or remorse. Remember, the primary object of lyric is to communicate to the lisener. Whatever does that best for parcular song is the right way.
Writing rhymes
Songs havent always rhymed. Ancient Hewbrew songwriters rhymed ideas instead of sounds they stated an idea or concept and then restated it in different words. Even now a song occasionally hits the charts that doesnt rhyme. Billy Veras At this moment is a prime example. However , its much , much easier to market a song that rhymes. What makes for a great rhyme ? that depends on what year it is and what style you are writing. Listen to the radio and to your favorite cds’ and compare where the rhymes are and what kind of rhymes are used. You’ll be amazed at all the options you find.
The rhyme Scheme
Rhyme Scheme is the term used to descirbe where rhymes are placed in the song. Within a given section (verse, chorus, or bridge( the rhymes are disgnated , in order of appearance, by letters of the laphabet. AA rhyme scheme has two lines that rhyme : He reached into this pocket and found a silver locket. An ABAB rhyme alternateds the rhyming lines, as follows: He reached in his pocket and what should he find but the fine sliver locket of the girl on his mind.
Inner Rhymes
Rhymes can work at the ened of the lines as well inside them. Rhymes occurring inside a line are acalled, you guess it inner rhymes. These are one of a songwriters screet weapons: Consciencely or unconsciously, we expect to hear rhymes at the ends of lines. Inner rhymes come as a suprise to the ear. This shelps keep a lisners attention. Where you choose to place inner rhymes can give different effects:
Back to back I went downtown and watched the girls walk by.
Very close together. I went around the town callin out your name.
Further apart. I went down to the bad side of town to see a girl I use to know.
In tow different lines I get so down when i come home to visit/ is it this town or knowin your are in it.
You can also put more than one set or internal rhymes into a line or set of lines. The following couplet contains a complex swe tof inner rhymes: I’m in a Uhaul packed wall to wall head back to TenneSEE Good bye to the smog and the high stress job year what I NEED
As you can see the A and D rhymes are in italics, the B and E rhymes in bold and the C rhymes in all caps. The rhyme scheme is ABABC / DEDEC. Make up your own patterns and see if you can write a set of lines that fit.
Imperfect Rhymes
In the previous lines, you might notice that the words U-Haul and wall rhyme perfectly, which is to say that the final vowel and consonant sounds are the same. Likewise the words goodbye and high are nearly perfect rhymes because they end in the same vowel sound.
But some rhymes are imperfect. Packed and back are pretty close; they both have a short a sound, like in the word at, followed by a k sound. However , packed has an additional t sound at the end so this parir doesnt rhyme perfectly. Tennessee and need each have a hard E as the last vowel but one nends in constanant D while the other eneds with the vowel. Smog and job end in different consonants, but have the same vowel sounds.
In the past much importance had been places on perfect rhyme. In some cases its still the sway to go. for the more formal sounding songs in the timless pop style, perfect rhyme often works best. But in todays more conversational songs, an imperfect rhymne can be fresh alternative. When people hear hear at the end of a line they usually expect to hear start or apart for the rhyme. If you surprise them by using car they might listen more closely to see what comes next.
Dont force It
Never accept an awkwardly pharsed or stilted sounding line just because it ends with a perfect rhyme. Forced rhymes sound amateurish and make a lisener think about the rhyme instead of the story or the melody. If you dont find a perfect rhyme that sloors you, look for an imperfect rhyme that does. If you cant find an imperfect rhyme, try different word in the rhyme spot.
Some songwriters use made rhymes that rely on reagional or genrespecific diction styles. For example, John Fogerty’s diction allows him to rhymes words like door and slow perfectly. With most singers these two words would be fairly weak rhyme. However made rhymes may limit a songs marketability to a few artists.
Pay Attention to Meter
Meter is the term used to describe the number of syllables in each line of a section of a song and which syllables are emphasized. Volumes have been written about types and uses of meter in songwriting as well as in powetry. For modern songwriter, simply studying the rhythm and stresses of popular songs will probably be more help than reading about spondee and iambic pentameter. Meter in todays songs often tries to mimic the rhymes of natural conversation rather thanforce lyrics into rigid poetic forms. That being said studying meter in songs of powetry can be valuable to a songwriter and there are some things that shold be covered her.
Sense of Symmetry
With meter, as with rhyme , a vertain sense of symmetry is necessary for a song to have a cohesive feel. If you use an 8/6/8/5 meter ( each number represents the number of syllables in a line) and an ABCB/ ABCB rhyme scheme in the first verse the second verse should follow suit. Not that you cant occasionally wedge in an extra word, but make sure that the verses feel alike and are easily indentifiable as verses. This helps to provide a sense of place within the song, like chapters in a book or scenes in a movie.
Stretching vowels
Sometimes you may need more syllables in a line than you have words to fill them. An alternative to adding unnecessary words is to stretch the vowels in some words to cover multiple syllables. A perfect example of this is found in the Frankie Valli and the Four SEasons song Big girls dont cry in which the words of the hook only make up foru syllables but are sung as eight.
Some vowels like the eye sound in cry and the oo sound in blue lend themselves to stretching by being sung as trills or yodels and simply changing noties wherever the meldoy normally requires it.In the big girls dont cry for instance this is done by sliding between two notes in the word big. The other stretched words repeat certain sounds, but big adds a syllable by changing notes. Sometimes you can juse let one note ride for several beats.
Prosody, Alliteration, and Cliches
"The good , the bad, and the ugly: might be an apt title for these tricks of the trade. Prosody is good. Alliteration can be a nice peice of ear candy or an ugly distraction. Cliches are usually bad unless used before they become cliches. Maybe one of your lines will be a cliche someday but lets hope its not a cliche just yet.
Prosody
Simply put, prosody means that something sounds like what it is. If you have a slow sad sounding piece of music and write a lyric over if that describes how much fun you have skateboarding, it might confuse the listener. Likewaise a bouncy uptempo number about losing your mom in a car crash doesnt seem approprate. When writing lyrics to a melody, listen carefully to see that the melody evokes the right kind of mood.
Alliteration
When different words within a line or stanza of a song begin with the same sound , its called alliteration. Think of it as rhyme in reverse. With alliteration , the wrods can be adjoining like "manic monday" or in amost any kind of song alliteration is especially good for songs with a light or silly tone. Who can forget the all time classic, "Great Green Globs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts"?
Overused Words and Phrases
There’s atleast one big publisher in Nashville Who doesnt want to hear the words love or heart in another song as long as he lives. Why ? He listens to hundreds of songs every week, and guess which words he hears the most ?
Emotions are the real unerpinnings of any good songs. You want to get the listener to feel what you feel, but using emotional words like love and heart is not the best way to get that feelings across. While theres no argument that love songs anti love songs, lost love songs , or love gone bad songs are big moneymakeers, people get tired of hearing the same words in every song. Look for alternatives. Describe your love instead of just stating its existence and location. When you do use words like love and heart , make sure that they mean something.
There are thousands of cliche phrases to be avoided, but a top ten list might look something like this.
1. We’ll never part. 6.how can i make you see.
2. its really true. 7.got to make him or her mine.
3. I cant live without you 8.soft as a dove.
4. Thats the way it goes. 9.please dont go.
5. We can make it if we try. 10.then you’ll understand.
Unnecessary Words
Anyone whose written more than a few songs knows that some words are perfect for those times when you to fill a hole in a line. " Just," " really," "very," "well," baby," and many otherse can come in handy, but its easy to become dependent on filler words and to overuse them. A common practive of professional songwriters is to look over a completed song and see if it needs a just ectomy," which is to say "are there any unnecessary words that can be replaced by better ones ?" The following two lines show the results of a quadruple bypass just ectomy:
Before: "I said well now baby thats just really very sad."
After : "I said well now sweet pea that’d make a statue cry."
Sometimes theres only one word that works in a given spot. As long as it works naturally, without sounding forced, and doesnt bring the song down or appear too often in the same lyric, it might be just the thing you need in a particular spot.
Visual Writing
A song is made of sound and words and can only get across conversation and other things expressed by sound and words right ? Wrong ! A song is made of sound and words and both , especially words, can be used to make sensations real in the imagination. Writing to evoke the senses of the listner is called "visual writing." Since there are five senses , this is an incomplete term, but its the one most publishers use, so we are stuck with it for now.
Impressionism
A great lyric device is to give an impression of something that gets the listener to fill in details from his or her own imagination. You could say, "he didnt seem trustworthy. I got the impression he was hiding something." That gets the information acrorss, but doesnt involve the listener. If you say, His shifty eyes looked away and he changed the subject, " a number of things happen. You give a partial visual-shifty eyes which begs the imagination to complete it (by supplying the rest of the face ) and gives some information about the character. Some action looking away give further clues. By the time you get to he changed the subject the listener has enough information for it to mean something that the person, who doesnt look trustworthy, is hiding something. You’ll have the listeners full attention as he or she waits for the next story clue. What conclusions would you draw from the following lines ? The waiter brought champagne and i thought / bout the ring in my pocket that three months pay bought. He sits in the bleachers, watching them play / and dreams of his own younger days.
Specicicity
Sometimes its better to spell your information out in capital letters than to give an impression that may not get your piont across. If you are writing a song about falling in love with a classic truck, you could say shinging like a cherry in the late september sun, the automotive relic of a time and place long gone or she was a cherried out half ton fire engine red, 1950 Studebaker flatbed."
Which of these lines packs a more comploete story ? Which line has its visual focus on the subject ? Most importantly, which line will appeal to people who are likely to be interested in a song sabout a truck ? While both of these lines might work in the song the second line has more pertinent infomration and less dispensable information. Using the first line would mean having to use atleast one more line just to establish that its a truck. Since you cant fit an infinite number of lines in a three minute song, this could mean having to leave out other information.
Finishing Touches
When your lyric is nearly done, read it aloud several times. If you have a melody, sing it, too. Look for spots that dont feel right. if you keep telling yourself that a particular line is good enough, its probably not. Heres a lyric checklist to help you out. Remember that a lyric can be technically perfect and still be a bomb.
1. the story is clear and easy to follow.
2. the lyric style works well with the musical style.
3. the lyric matches the mood of the music.
4.the rhyme chcmeis consistent and rhymes are unforced.
5. the meter is interesting and fairly symmetrical within sections of the song.
6. the style and vocabulary choices are appropriate to the target market.
7. the syntax and grammar of the song feel natural.
8. any unnecessary words and cliches ahave been removed or replaced.
9. the song makes the listener see the story.
10. it feels done.
Thinking Outside the Box
Once youv’e got a firm grip on the fundamentals of lyric writing, bend the rules break them make new ones and try them out. The songwriters who make the biggest gpalsh are the ones who find new ways of saying something or, if they are really lucky, a thing that no noe has ever said.
Look for great songs that break the rules and figure out why they work: there may be a new rule hiding in there somewhere. Sonewriting rules are really guidleines to help you avoicd trouble spots. Most times, its easier to color inside the lines, follow the rules, and do what you know will work. Sometimes, though, its fun to try something different. Wehether it works or not depends on how you do it and whether or not its a good day.
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