Lyrics, Ethics, and Pop-up References
Dear reader, writing a song is rarely even good on the first try. Even the greatest lyricists had to make at least some sort of mistake at the beginning of their journeys. Please don’t feel discouraged if you aren’t writing lyrics at the quality of the Beatles’ Yesterday on your first go. Only with time and practice, should you see real progress being made. Now that’s all said and done, let’s start looking over the gritty and dirty shall we?
Here’s an example of lyrics from my own song the day she thought back Listen here.
“When I swallow your love like a pill, my stomach grows sick and I grow ill. Something's wrong... I can always tell, the touch of your lips stings like hell. To have heard ya laugh the day I fell, kicking up my dead body down a well. The origin of all this hate is a mystery, you just threw out all our history.”
You should first take note that you will perhaps not learn to write the lyrics in the structure or format that I choose to write my own. As you start rolling down this artistic journey, which I sometimes call hell and on other days call heaven, you will learn what tricks and kicks really make your lyrics one of your own. As corny and cheesy as it sounds, we must all strive to be our most unique selves in order to become our true artistic selves in a way. And as far as you’re concerned, you will notice how us artists are egotistical and enjoy talking about ourselves… a lot.
“Songwriting as an art is a bit archaic now. Just writing a song is not good enough.” — David Bowie
There are varying ideas on what an ideal flow for a song should look like. In poetry, there’s a diverse range of different forms of poem that vary far and wide in just how experimental the structure of a poem could be read. And just like poetry, the structure of your lyrics, from verses to bridges to choruses, can always differ based on your intentions for your song. For example, who is your audience?
Teen girls? Indie hipsters? Punks? Metalheads? The elderly? Whoever your audience is, the right song can always work well in the correct conditions. However, one should keep an eye out for the unexpected song that finds an audience, though you must still, even here, have your audience.
Also, what is the specific message or theme that you want delivered to your audience through the format of your song? Love? Hate? Anger? Sadness? Depression? Nostalgia? Anything to do with the ongoing force of life in general that touches us all?
When writing lyrics for songs, as you put in more and more work/practice of course, you can either give your letter to any listener by choosing to either directly or indirectly include a description in your lyrics. This means that you could either express your ideas literally in the simplest explanation possible or by expressing your letter to your audience in the form of vivid, colorful, and complex imagery; which could sometimes be recognized as the form of lyric writing used in psychedelic music, for example. In this example, one could be wanting to draw out the experience of using psychedelic drugs to the listener through both the sound and spoken voice noticed through the music.
I want to make this clear that someone else in the community could easily feed you a more technique-based and straightforward guide to writing out lyrics. Verse to a bridge to chorus and all that crap. And well… there are multiple ways to pull lyrics out of that cranium of yours aren’t there?
There were key differences between a Beatles song written by Paul and one written by John. There’s a distinction between Julian Casablancas' voice and Morrisey’s voice and whatnot. The world of music is too large and complex for anyone to make the perfect song to dominate all others, in my belief, so go nuts kid and whack your music with a baseball bat. That shit.
But while you’re busy there scaring the ones in power with your music, you’ve gotta keep in mind some advice regarding ethics in songwriting. From my personal experience, if you’re going to be writing your music through a style of stream of consciousness, you’ve gotta always be careful and alert of hurting the lower man or even let’s say having your song come off as harassment. It ain’t cool and it’s gonna drool ya know.
Once you put out your lyrics, the world is just set to possibly view your song in another direction or dimension that’s even opposite to what you envisioned in the first place. But kid, don’t get all Eric Clapton and start spitting out some racist shit to get yourself in trouble. Even when they all start judging you, you’ve gotta keep cool and calm. You don’t have to lose yourself to these crowds of people and I think you know it yeah? You’re gonna kill it! I’ll watch from here mate.
“I was better than a punk. I was a protagonist.” — Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues
🧠 Contributor: The Shawn House
Last updated