A friend recently asked me if I had any advice for writing lyrics. I’m not sure I have especially profound songwriting advice to share, as I still feel very much like a beginner myself, but here are a few thoughts on songwriting that I found helpful when I got started.
- Look at and learn from songs you like! How the writer moves between ideas, uses structure, chooses words, etc. Lorde’s “Liability” is one that I’ve enjoyed studying this way.
- It’s okay for lyrics to not feel right / up to your aesthetic standard in the first draft. Rewriting is very common and normal. Getting better at something over time is normal, too.
- Many—most?—successful songs are about one core idea. Ideally, the core idea will develop or vary throughout the song so that it’s interesting for the listener. In typical song structures, the core idea is in the chorus, and the variation happens in the verse—but you can play with that.
- You don’t have to rhyme. Also, playing with “near rhymes” can be really fun. Jason Mraz’s “A Beautiful Mess” is one song I love that uses near rhymes in a neat way.
Getting stuck while writing a song is normal, too. Depending on the type of stuck-ness you are experiencing, different things might help:
- Go back to the character. Who is singing this song? What’s happening in their lives, and what would they want to say about it? This is especially helpful for musical theatre lyrics.
- Freewrite. Choose a topic or symbol in the song and write whatever comes to mind about it, just to get yourself expressing (however unartfully) about the song’s key ideas. Describing the five traditional senses (and the less traditional senses, too) as they relate to your idea/symbol can open up your writing. Sometimes, an interesting idea will pop up and you can capitalize on that.
- Let your thesaurus & rhyming dictionary spark new ideas. Picking a few keywords and then roaming through a thesaurus or rhyming dictionary with them can generate unexpected ideas.
- Ask other folks to read/listen. Though it’s often good to take folks’ advice with a grain of salt, folks tend to represent their own reflections fairly honestly, and you can use that information to influence your writing.
Thank you to Nathan for inspiring this post.