Lyrics I

Lyrics mostly follow the same principles as Rhythm and Pitch. I mean, I’ve explained the importance of rhyming ten times—and that’s a concept most people will only know from language!

That’s why I’ll first explain what’s new and different. This chapter assumes you already have your melody, and add lyrics afterward.

Next chapter I’ll talk about when the lyrics come first, and the melody second. Then I’ll also give some quick examples about how the previous principles apply.

What’s our goal?

What’s the point of lyrics? To …

• Convey a melody (in a nice way)
• Convey a message or emotion

You can choose, for yourself, which is more important. But to me, I’d always pick something that sounds good over the other.

That wasn’t always the case. I have many songs, from when I was a kid, where I really tried to cram all my beautiful sentences onto melodies where they just didn’t fit. I was more concerned with proper grammar and telling a novel, than anything else.

And that’s the issue. You’re not telling a novel. You’re creating music. If you care 100% about your message or topic, you’d write a novel or give a speech. Those are ideal for that purpose.

Music is about emotion and entertainment, first and foremost. If your “message” gets in the way of that, nobody wants to listen to the song, so it isn’t heard anyway.

It also means you shouldn’t preach. Another beginner mistake: writing a song like you’re explaining or convincing the listener. You’re not. Songs are about the singer conveying some feeling or thought in a musical way. Give preference to the emotion and to your viewpoint. The listener will decide or interpret however they want.

Lyrics that fit

Lyrics that sound good are more important. So let’s start there.

You’re more than allowed to play with grammar or distort words if that sounds better.

Listen to popular singers. They most likely pronounce certain sounds in an odd way. For their songs (or voice), it sounds wonderful and better.

Similarly, sounds are often stretched or repeated.

• “Day” might become two syllables: “Da-y”
• “Heart” might become “Ha-Ha-Heart”
• Any vowel can be stretched over multiple pitches: “Hee-ee-eey”

And we all know some popular songs that commit grammar crimes left and right.

My tip is to give preference to this, if possible. Find words and sounds that fit with your melody. Once that fit perfectly and complement it.

Start there. Start by listing words or sentences that would fit your melody. Once you have a few amazing pieces, use the rest of the lyrics to make it mean something.

You are not allowed to break rhythm at will to sneak an extra syllable in there (or remove one)

And you know why! Because any sudden change to that rhythm of the notes will feel odd and ugly to us. Listeners will know you only did that so that the words actually fit the melody.

Don’t change a rhythm that works. Change the words—or in what way you sing them—to fit the music.

Side note: not for everyone

Different genres have different “sounds” that are common. Or, conversely, sounds that just kill the mood.

Singing “Night” like you’re saying “I”, spread over three notes, is fine in a pop song.

In musical theatre, that won’t do. There, diction is important. Text needs to fit the melody perfectly and be understood by all.

Conversely, a heavy vibrato is fine there, while a punk singer with vibrato wouldn’t be great.

Research the common sounds for your genre. Apply those.

Practical tips

Some words just sound good and other’s don’t. You’ll only learn this through experience. (It’d be quite useless to provide a long list here of all the words I can think of.) You probably already thought of a few clichés, like “heart”, “you” and “hurt”.

These are mostly emotional words. Yes, the sound is determined by the actual sound (and how much emotion you can put into it), but also the meaning. I mean, “you” isn’t far from “poop”. But I can’t for the life of me imagine someone singing poop and actually sounding good while doing it.

In general,

• It’s easier to manipulate short, well-known words.
• Alternatively, a lyric sounds more sophisticated and strong if you use longer words.

Turning “Day” into “Da-y” won’t create issues. People will still understand it and it’s easy to make the change. Manipulating the sound or rhythm of “condescendingly” is a tougher task.

But if you can fit such long words on the melody, it’s magic. It’s hard. It’s rare. That’s why people notice it and it “feels” right. The important part, of course, is that the syllables match, especially the emphasized syllable.

Lyrics that mean something

For me, this is usually the second step. And often it’s not much of a step at all. By now, you basically have your whole song; you only need to “connect the dots”.

This means you probably already have a theme or topic. There’s already an emotion to the words. In the meantime, your brain already worked out what it wanted to say.

Look at what you have and try to make it as strong as possible. Remember, we’re not preaching or explaining. You are writing from a personal emotion or experience.

This is one of the fun quirks of humans. Nobody wants to listen to a song in which you tell them to, I don’t know, “don’t break promises”. But they’ll listen to a song in which you tell a story about how you broke a promise and ended up feeling worse for it—which clearly has the same message.

Exploration

Art is mostly an exploration of a topic or feeling. That’s what lyrics should be. It’s similar to an essay, but with the key difference that logic or arguments aren’t our focal point here.

Remember, we’re still not making a Powerpoint presentation.

Instead,

• The first few lines throw something interesting out there. Something worth exploring.
• The rest of the song talks about it in different ways. Maybe different emotions, different perspectives, different consequences, or just the same thing in different words.

The verse offers something. A thought, a problem, a situation. Start with a few sentences that are intriguing, or mysterious, or clearly set a tone.

Then the chorus moves to the most emotional moment. A decision, a terrible consequence, or a really happy feeling. It’s like giving a summary of the most emotional highlight from this topic.

This isn’t a “conclusion” or “answer to a problem”. Because,

• That’d be preaching or teaching again
• Where do you go from there? Your first chorus concludes your story … what then? (If you conclude, make that the last sentence of your song.)
• The best topics for songs have no conclusion or answer

Yes, exploration is the key word. Don’t start making mind-maps, or doing word association tricks, or getting a (rhyming) dictionary. You have a strong melody and some strong sounds you want to use.

Find a common ground, a good topic, a feeling inside you. And explore that. Doing the exploration during verses or quieter parts, and providing the highlight or the strongest emotion in the chorus and bridge.

Writing skill

But no matter how many tips I give, lyric writing is obviously a writing skill. You need a good understanding of language to do it. It’s hard to communicate anything if you don’t know the words or the linguistic structure.

Even then, some vocabulary or grammar rules aren’t enough. Knowing the theory does not imply you can apply the theory (well). It takes more skill than that to put multiple sentences to the same rhythm. To find rhyme words that sound good, but aren’t cliché or contrived.

Usually, there are sharper ways to say what you want to say. A beginner might write a sentence of thirty words to convey a feeling. An experienced writer can do the same in ten stronger words.

A experienced writer will also know many small “rules” to make a lyric better, such as

• Emphasis is automatically added to words at the start or end.
• Repetition is great when intended (and a few words apart), not if you accidentally use the same words over and over. (Something like “Love is great, love is amazing, love is lovely oh I love love.” is repetition … but hardly an easy lyric to make work.)
• Active and direct voice is usually better. (Humans tend to “hedge”, adding all these filler words, or writing sentences in passive voice. It just adds noise and muddles the message.)

This is, again, not in the realm of this course. You can check out some of my Writing courses.

Or just read, write and speak a lot. Consume many different types of media in the language of choice. And simply try songwriting a lot, giving yourself feedback as you go.