How the hell do you write lyrics?

What are some things associated with the topic?
What situations are related?
What do others feel about it?
Blah, blah, blah... more questions.

While this can be a bit awkward, you should get some fodder here.

I especially recommended thinking about existing songs' lyrics. Take the Specials' "A Message to You, Rudy" -- they made a fictional bad boy, create a bunch of fictional scoldings to him, and then put in some drama/tension-building stuff like "Better think of your future/Else youll wind up in jail"

And that song has a great feel with a really basic formula for the lyrics.

So think of how lyrics are working, and how you could make equivalents to what good lyrics writers have done before.

http://www.rhymezone.com/

Lately I've just been coming up with an odd phrase that I like or a song title I want to use, and branching out from there. The other day I decided I wanted to have a song called "Esperanto" so I extrapolated from that.

have a good think about your subject for half an hour or so, go to the mic, hit record

This is actually how I write melodies. I just hit record and start singing nonsense words and then I try to write lyrics that fit into a similar sound and meter. The words I come up with off the cuff are never good enough to keep though.

Certainly don't overuse 'em (see: rap), but don't underestimate either.

That said, once you have words there, it's pretty easy to replace them with other words. If you're totally stuck, just open up a random book and take a few sentences and use them for lyrics. Either they'll be good enough or you will have a fairly easy time improving the lyrics.

I don't really have much a problem writing lyrics, because once I've got the melody and the meter, it just kind of flows. But then again, I don't really care that much about lyrics, so so long as it fits the melody and meter, I tend not to think too carefully about them.

references to satan, ancient greco-roman/judeo-christian and/or norse mythology, wizards/hobbits/orcs/trolls and other Tolkienesque sword and sorcery inagery, 50's/60's horror movies, science fiction, robots, utopias/dystopias, aliens and flying saucers.

also: songs about sexual prowess and life on the road and the horrors of war.

Sometimes it blows my mind that our culture expects someone who's talented enough to write a good melody (a rarity in itself) to also be able to come up with the words to match.

I have no idea what Rhymezone is, but if it's indeed a rhyming dictionary, that's nauseating.

See, to me this rhyme practically screams "rhyming dictionary." And if you release a song like this, critics will call you on it.

On the other hand, if you release a pop hit that rhymes "hump" with "lump," they will praise your subtle Samuel Taylor Coleridge borrowings ("with heavy thump, a lifeless lump, they fell down one by one.") Actually, no, they won't.

Sorry, I can't let go of the subject... This is also the most cringe-inducing part of the Doors' "Light My Fire": the lines about wallowing "in the mire" and love having become "a funeral pyre" are there for a crushingly obvious "novel" rhyme with "fire," even while their negative connotations go directly against the rest of the lyrics; then poor Jim has to contort himself to make them fit - there is "no time" to wallow in the mire, you see.

Silly haters.

Hi Momus!

Remove the words "sky", "high" and "I" from the English language.

(You can discuss between yourselves whether this is actually three steps or not)

She's not just a sassy flirt,
She's cosmopolitan.
She's located in the Central Europe time zone,
She is now.

She is not the right choice unless you can stay the day,
She's a catalog.
She is still doing great,
She's an anomaly.

She is approximately 5
She is tucked away,
She's not available.
She's prohibited,
She's greeting you.

that's why i like when singers dont always enunciate so clearly. it keeps meaning maleable.

See, to me this rhyme practically screams "rhyming dictionary." And if you release a song like this, critics will call you on it.

I don't particularly care one way or another whether or not lyrics rhyme, but if you're writing your lyrics wondering whether or not critics will call you on your methods, then you've no business writing lyrics.

I'm not trying to be rockist or say that I don't care what others think of my music or anything like that. I just know it's retarded to give two fucks what critics think when you're just in the process of writing the damn song. If you want to worry about it later when you're trying to improve the lyrics you've already written then maybe...

But a lot of critics "call you on" shit that isn't even true. The number of times I've seen critics explain effects or sounds in records with completely inaccurate descriptions is mindbogglingly huge. Half the time I want to say "You know, jackass, that isn't spring reverb... It's delay." If so many critics seem to have no idea how music is made in general, then how should one expect them to have clue number one about how lyrics are written for any specific songwriter. I'd be willing to wager that with the exception of really bad rhymes like "high" with "sky," critics are only right when they call somebody on using a rhyming dictionary a very small percentage of the time.

I guess I'm just amazed that anybody, in a thread asking for ideas to get out of a block writing lyrics, says anything remotely resembling "oh don't do that because the critics won't like it." Writer's block is about the inner critic, which is hard enough to deal with in the absense of outer critics and downright impossible to deal with when you think you've got to impress somebody who's probably going to listen to your record with one ear one time and then write something the rest of us are supposed to assume is well-informed.

She hates me!
She hates me!
She hates me!
But I wanna get in her

We've been trying to persuade him that this song should be his band's next single but he's like 'It means nothing, I did it in 5 mins' and we're like 'Duuuh, that's why it's so good, Paranoid was written in 5 mins etc' and he wants to pick another song as a single and we're like 'that other song sux, what's wrong with you, this one is screaming to be a single' and he's like 'it's not about anyone in particular' and then an hour later he goes 'actually it's about S-', and we're like 'AhahahahAAAA!'

How do you go about fitting lyrics to a melody? I was writing something last night and had a bit of a revelation - that if I think of a line as having three or four stress points that have to be landed on, then as long as those are significant syllables the lyric can be any length and metre. Like suspending a washing line.

Idk, it wouldn't fit a clear, regular melody, but it feels more creative rhythmically. In fact maybe that's how hip hop works?

I guess it's the same theory as all the drill'n'bass rhythms people like Aphex Twin used to do. The kick, hats and effects are able to do almost anything as long as there's a punctuating snare on every bar

No idea why I called it the Thomp, emil.y. Think I was thinking of stompy glam rock and had interpolated it with too much time on ilx

I like E3's lyrics!

I'd never heard that Silver Jews song before, but fgti wasn't far off in some ways

Yeah it talks better than it scans, which isn't to say that it doesn't scan well, it's just got great rhythm! kudos

I was writing something last night and had a bit of a revelation - that if I think of a line as having three or four stress points that have to be landed on, then as long as those are significant syllables the lyric can be any length and metre.

It sounds like you're describing the stressed and unstressed syllables of the meter.

MAmas in the BASEment
MIXing up the MEdicine
I'M on the PAVEment
THINKin about the GOVernment

I think, depending on how you look at it, this has a consistent meter of two stressed syllables per line, but has a different number of total syllables on each line. At least that's how I understand the stressed/unstressed thing. Meter is a little confusing.

I'm not sure how much those syllables are stressed, but they're the ones that fall on (or close to) one and three, which are the strong beats.

Well not really. Lots of them are on the upbeat.

That's what I was thinking of. That metre is regular and the words are great and read natural - I can't write that, but I could keep the stresses where they are, and use words that come easier to me:

MAma's been BASin'
MIXed up and MAD
and I'M no PAYmaster
THINK - GO get some

which lets me fit in something more natural to me, with the bonus of breaking up the rhythm and making my vocal more interesting.

I dunno, it wouldn't work if the vocal is carrying a 'strong' melody - but if you're only changing pitch a little, it might allow a more natural approach?

Something I've realised in this thread is it's kind of easy to write comedy rap in the style of Ugly Duckling, Paul Barman etc.

Before I was properly into songwriting I'd write lyrics all the time. Now I'm weiting songs/in a band, I find I'm on the spot, and as people have said above, its just easier to Liz Fraser it bascially and go "bnaaa woot too ba doooo" to the melody I want, then come up with the words later. I'm not happy with doing it this way as my lyrics end up a little forced and shallow, but eh.

writing songs not weiting songs gah.

I used to keep a notebook full of bad poetry (I am a hopeless poet), do the Liz Fraser thing when we were writing songs with the band, then start throwing in themes and images from the poems if they felt right. That way I wasn't just reacting to the music, b/c if I tried that I felt the same as Trayce - it would feel a bit contrived, lacking in emotional honesty.

I have to come up with a melody before I can think about lyrics because that informs so much of where I'm going to go in terms of meter and rhyme scheme. The idea of writing lyrics and then attempting to fit them to a melody is exactly counter to the way my mind works, unless of course I'm writing parody lyrics to an already-famous song.

Something I've realised in this thread is it's kind of easy to write comedy rap in the style of Ugly Duckling, Paul Barman etc.

― Pingu Unchained (dog latin), Wednesday, June 26, 2013 6:23 AM (5 hours ago)

it's kind of easy to step off a tall building too

but anything that gets you thinking about the rhythm of words is good practice. understanding meter is a blessing and curse. it's good to know that words have naturally stressed and unstressed syllables, arranging them in patterns is the key to good lyric writing, but the temptation to turn lyrics into a math equation is a risk. it's fun to set up a pattern and then violate it. testing how much abuse your pattern can take is a way to keep things lively. try to get in the habit of surprising yourself.

and thanks for the kind word on the lyrics, you're free to use them as you see fit, take em wholesale, change em up, use the syllable pattern as a framework for your own comedy rhymes, w/e. interested in seeing how the song turns out!

Heh, so last night we sat down as a group to adlib some lyrics on the spot. Writing for the song upthread was abandoned and we ended up brainfarting a silly little rap using a random topic (the Black Death) chosen from the pages of a History magazine that was lying around.

Some choice lines included:

"When I feel that tetchy, I'm looking sketchy / I feel like a wretch and my tongue's all stretchy / Standing on the spot, living in a squat / Bubonic plague, babe, you know what I got"
"I run a business / Licking tramps' faces / Tasting their disgraces / Look it up on Craigslist"
"I wear sunglasses cos I can't see / If you hold dear to your health then don't come near me"
"I got cough bloody sputum / You can't refute 'em / Blackened dead tissue in your extremities / Your fingers, toes and your NOSSSSE"

It was a fun way to kill time and work on nonsense free-association while teaching ourselves a bit about how rhythm and rhyme can be flexed into place.

that kind of ridiculous brainstorming is a great way to break a creative logjam. as long as you come to your senses eventually and don't become the bloodhound gang.

rewriting's important too. refine till it shines. I instinctively did it to my own suggestion after rereading it this morning:

so you bought a crass shirt from the H&M
and you wear it as you tear into a grocery bag
all the candy rappers float down the gutterstream
of a pissant who has listened
but can never be seen

H&M and grocery bag don't rhyme at all but the meter and adherence to the melody in the second line forgives it I think

for me the hardest part of writing lyrics was always the second verse. i'd get a first verse and a chorus i was happy with, but then you have to write more on the same subject and in the same rhythm/rhyme scheme. i started exploding the lyric structure for the second verse so i wouldn't be bound by it. one of my favorite tricks was to have the first verse be economical and then get really wordy for the second verse.

to deconstruct the meter a little:

so you BOUGHT a crass SHIRT from the H and m
and you WEAR IT as you TEAR INto a GROcery bag

you could use near similar words to get the same meaning across, still have something that adheres to the melody, but be a lot less effective in terms of meter. for example this would sound kind of terrible comparatively:

you BOUGHT a crass T shirt from the LOCal h and M
and you WORE IT when you ATTENded the FAP of hen

(You might think the results are rubbish, but) I have a pretty good process for lyric writing. Considering I'm not some freak who speaks in couplets. Or can come up with a perfect simile on the spot. Like some people I know.

I turn on Chrome and turn off all the Java and image loading. Then I pick a band or a songwriter, usually someone I know really well. I load each of their songs in a separate tab on my laptop, from songmeanings. 200 open tabs of Robert Forster lyrics, for example. Then I go to bed and set my alarm to wake me up 1 hour before I'd naturally wake up-- I sleep 7 hours a night, so I'll set it for 6.

I wake up and take my laptop and go to the kitchen and make coffee-- or go to a coffee shop. I slowly drink two coffees while "brainstorming", writing couplets and jokes and ideas for choruses. Any time I lose steam, I treat the Robert Forster lyrics like a flashcard. I scan the comments to see what people got out of it. I think of other ways of saying the same thing. Or a way of expressing how I feel about the same issue. Or write a few phrases with the same rhythmic idea-- I have some twenty additional verses I've written to the melody of "Woke Up New", i.e.

What I'm left with is pages and pages and pages of interesting phrases or verses or rejoinders or jokes or whatever. Then, when a song is coming together at the piano or in the practice space, I refer to this hard data and typically I'll find exactly the right phrase I'm looking for.

It's decidedly anti-"divine inspiration" but I'm happy with the results.

For example, fuck it, when I was out on tour with [a band], I was so impressed with their lead singer's ability to take a seemingly insignificant daily activity-- like, say, seeing Judy Garland's star on Sunset-- and turn it around into a gorgeous song. So I decided to try and take a couple of instances from -my own memory banks- and describe them with a level of accuracy that I hoped would turn into something worth listening to. Here was the raw data-- be warned, it's raw data:

Surrounded by an army of the sweetest
Air cadets and country breezes
I missed the boat when I was young
And spent my time in the arms of anyone
But now my exoskeleton has*
Grown bigger, better, and my pockets have
Filled up with a government loan
I can buy you drinks, I can take you home

But all I ever had in mind
Was an arm around my shoulder
And for an arm around my shoulder
I shoulda had a son

With a brand new Brazilian bauble
And jeans that belong on a model
I stumbled into a perfect hall
For doing drugs in a bathroom stall**
And we talked about the drugs and we
Decided to abstain but still we
Locked ourselves inside and then
My fingers locked behind your head and
You hooked your pinkies on my jeans and
I'm twenty-eight and you're nineteen and
The innocent fun that was soon to be***
Will start to feel like currency and
We're trying to get it on in bed, you've
Taken me home, you're giving me head, you've
Put on "The Queen Is Dead"
But I just want to talk instead

Cause all I ever had in mind
Was an arm around my shoulder
And for an arm around my shoulder
I shoulda had a son

* "exoskeleton" came from a Future of the Left flashcard, I liked the idea of singing "exoskeleton" in a song
** this is almost verbatim a Hidden Cameras line "Happiness is a smell I inhale like a drug done in a darkened hall / or a bathroom stall with a friend or a man with a hard-on"
*** i.e. "Soon to be / Innocent Fun", geddit, it's a conflation of two Arthur Russell song titles

Anyway, the entire song was too descriptive and on-the-nose to be usable, but the data was interesting. Six months later I re-appropriated the "I shoulda had a son" into another song. Eighteen months later, I had a slow song with a nice melody. The chorus sounded really good when I just sang "Compassion" over and over again. Suddenly the main body of the data found new life. I removed the explicit details, the stolen phrases, softened the porn. I objectified The Other in the first verse and The Self in the second. It turned into something I'm happy with:

We talked about the drugs and we
Decided to abstain but still we
Locked ourselves inside and then
My fingers lock behind your head
You hook your pinkies on my jeans
I’m twenty-eight and you’re nineteen
Compassion, compassion

The innocent fun soon-to-be
Will start to feel like currency
As we try to get in on in bed
You’ve taken me home and you’re giving me head
You’ve put on The Queen Is Dead
But I just want to talk instead
Compassion, compassion

Song done, that's how I do it anyway. Pages and pages and pages of brainstorming put together into collage pieces. I've shared this process with a couple of other lyric writers and they told me it was useful, so there it is.

Oh fuck, I c/p'd an old version of the lyric. "You've taken me home and you're giving me head" is now the softer "You've given me your home and head". Shit, how embarrassing. My bf read the original and was like "ew" so I changed it

I do that too, I call it overwriting

good approach for boiling things down, especially since only 1/8 of anything anyone writes is bound to be any good unless you're one of those horrible talented ppl we hate

also what kind of humblebraggery is this

My fingers locked behind your head and
You hooked your pinkies on my jeans and
I'm twenty-eight and you're nineteen and
The innocent fun that was soon to be***
Will start to feel like currency and
We're trying to get it on in bed, you've
Taken me home, you're giving me head, you've
Put on "The Queen Is Dead"

Well not really. Lots of them are on the upbeat.

― wk, Tuesday, June 25, 2013 10:06 PM (Yesterday)

I don't even think there ARE upbeats because that song swings. You're right that some of those syllables are anticipating the beat, of course; that's what I might by "close to it." Still, my point was that I'm not sure how much those syllables are stressed and they're all basically the ones closest to the one and the three.

It's a song, it's not autobiography!
An honest brag would be more along the lines of "I've been with the same man for 10 years and we still do it"
Which is the first line in another song

Overwriting sounds like a criticism of a final product! I prefer brainstorming. Or wordbarfing

Oh and I forgot to mention the most important part of this process is that you have to do it in 2-hour sessions, every other day. The routine is important. Like Carey Mercer says: "I write all the time. It's not good to stop."

I think that's great, fgti, thanks for sharing it

^^

Well, thanks for indulging me!

I don't really have much luck writing out tons of lyrics and then trying to mate it to music. I keep some lists of titles and maybe a couple of small ideas tied to the title, but I never really try to actually write the lyrics until I got some music that to me sounds like it could be that song. To me, it's the riff or the music that's got to come first and a title that fits, then the words slowly kind of fit in to finish it.

I have to come up with a melody before I can think about lyrics because that informs so much of where I'm going to go in terms of meter and rhyme scheme.

Yeah this totally. I need to remember to bring my notebooks to rehearsals with me. I have notes in a draft gmail i can look at on my phone but its hard to read.

Also I absolutely love 0w3ns notes there. Thats a great approach!

Eh so my bandmate and I spent the evening trying to have another stab at this song and we wrote something out. Not sure what sort of shape it's in yet and I feel pretty braindead so it's prob gonna need a lot of ironing out, but for the sakes of a snapshot, this is what we have now. Going for a sort of post-human, dystopian thing really but we literally discussed it line by line, went through tangents, cut and paste bits here and there, got worried about being too obvious, then too subtle... you know... anyways...

Oh well I get so excited I cannot move
Disinfected, I will scavenge for food
Surgeons scalpel as they makes the cut
Vultures circles, the chickens strut

King of jungle gym I wore my paper crown
Came down from the mountains and we hit the town
They were drinking bottled water til they almost drowned
In case of entropy, these earplugs will smother the sound

Don’t call it human nature, I’m a stone age man
Pale blue shirt you know I am what I am
Now my sleeves are tied up and my hair is shorn
Got my sunshine umbrella from the 99 store

Got a long long long long way to go
Through the plastic and the tin cans and the undergrowth
If the heat death doesn’t kill us then we’ll raise some children of our owwwwwn

BRIDGE
Cos I’m a stone age mammal I’m a stone age man
I see what I want, I got my stone age plan
A stone age mammal, I’m a stone age man
I get what I want, I got my stone age plan
(X2)

Stereo pumping with growth hormones
Elephants, houseflies and protozoans
Insects got me bugging but she bitches and moans
Hope that we’ll be happy in our family home

Riding round and round for publicity
With my tail held high so you all can see
Slippy peeling off my feathers, swinging from a tree
The boa chokes its prey but microbes will always succeed

Cos I’m a stone age mammal, I’m a stone age man

ach, why do things look so corny when they're written down?

love that 'owwwwn'

hehe, just spotted a lot of mistakes. i'm going to wake up tomorrow and hate these...

Lyrics arent poetry, they work for what they do but yr right, sometimes they look right odd written down! But thats ok! We're not all leonard bloody cohen.

haha, that's cool. a big improvement I think! "In case of entropy, these earplugs will smother the sound" sounds like a mouthful to me but it's tough to tell written down like that.

One more step along the lyrical journey. Went for another redraft and recorded a new demo just for fun (ignore the dodgy singing/production - it's more to get an idea of the melody, and also having fun in my room on my day off of course). Pretty much decided these are the final lyrics with maybe a few adjustments. i had fun doing the "stone age man" build up and adding voices/kazoos etc.

https://soundcloud.com/doglatin/the-thomp-home-demo

THE THOMP

R1:
Oh well I get so ignited, I burned my shoes
Got me disinfected, like chemicals
Surgeons scalpel as they make the cut
And now the stingrays circle and the chickens strut

R2:
Got a long long long long way to go
Through the plastic and the tin cans and the undergrowth
Saw them drinking bottled water til they almost drowned
In case of entropy, the death-rays will render your spine

R1:
Stereo pumping with growth hormones
Elephants, houseflies and protozoans
Now my sleeves are tied and my hair is long
But I can still reach out, fear my opposable thumb

R:2
Teachers preaching Nietzche birds and killer bees
And we’re busy buzzing caffeine, empty calories
And we’re loading up our slingshots for the ivory
The boa chokes its prey, but microbes will always succeed

BRIDGE:
Can we wait until a little bit later
To be rescued by invisible saviours
Tied to the screen, concerned with life and death dreams
But it’s a beautiful day outside
Doo doo doo doo
Dooo dooo doooooo etc…

BUILD UP:
Cos I’m a stone age mammal I’m a stone age man
I see what I want, I got my stone age plan
A stone age mammal, I’m a stone age man
I get what I want, I got my stone age plan
(X2)

R2:
Riding round and round for publicity
With my tail held high for you all to see
You’re really not as frightened as you ought to be
But then who woooooo-u-u-u-uld?

The OP is so exactly my personal situation I had to double check I didn't write it myself. Reading about Robert Pollard and his process is helpful but I haven't given that technique a real go yet. I love instrumental guitar but I have no good knowledge in recording and I feel like my progressions are really really good and interesting (just confident in it) but am feeling so unfinished with them without good recording ability and lyric writing dedication/good ideas...

I have varied interests in types of music too but listening to Real Estate for example... they're from and sing about a town very dear to my upbringing, they clearly have a fondness and nostalgia for the "atmosphere" of suburban north jersey, and the type of music they play is very close to how I'd approach that sound- so here I am stuck and feel like that could have so easily been my life. Jamming with Glenn Mercer, on stage with Yo La Tengo for their Hanukkah shows, etc. Not because I am cocky enough to think I would easily be as good as they are but because everything about them (age, geography, nostalgia, genre) is so close that I have to say what the hell am I doing with myself? Why won't I put myself out there and really make an attempt? Where's my passion? I can hear full compositions in my head around the progressions I play. I just need some friends that are actually close by and capable to play/record some music with.

My only real question is why did dog latin write a song about thomp?

― emil.y, Tuesday, 25 June 2013 19:53 (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

THANK YOU

ALSO RELEVANT

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=thomp

fgti's lyric sounds like a parenthetical girls song which i mean, i'm a fan, but others may find that less complimentary

I really like your song dog latin. Could maybe stand to lose a few syllables per line so you're suspending the melody more, but it hangs together very well.

Evan, today I want you to answer some band ads. Forget about passion, just go and do it.

Thanks for the support! I was just browsing craigslist today for them. Just a little grumpy that I'm not lucky enough to have a network of music playing friends close by. Also I've been a little too introverted to have jumped at the band ads option as well. Should I post a jam-request style one?

You know you should. Passion and all that be damned, if you get stuck in anyway nobody can tell the difference.

By passion I meant the basic courage and/or motivation to pursue people to work with or simply work hard on writing and recording songs I can say are good enough as demos. It's easy to be overly shy even doing that alone.

Thanks IK!

Evan - it's taken me 32 years to find people to make music with and right now I couldn't be happier hanging out and playing with my band. It's changed my life and in many ways my outlook and approach to my everyday business. But it took ages to find just two like-'minded people who had compatible ideas, despite living in a town with a fairly vibrant live music scene. I found most of the local bands were okay, but not doing anything outside the realms of what is already an established sound. I've been asked to join a doom metal band as a vocalist and while I find the idea interesting, I'm concerned we'd achieve nothing more than being yet another Sabbathy band called Godsmoker or whatever.

But I agree with what's said here - put an ad out on joinmyband or Gumtree and see who's about - you never know. Or maybe try home recording? Unless you do that already...

As for 'The Thomp', i think I was going for a portmanteau of thump and stomp, alluding to the glam rock rhythm I was thinking of when I first thought of the tune.

I have the ability to home record, but I'm not exactly dedicating myself enough to lay more than a guitar line down, fuss with it because it sounds shit in GarageBand, then by that time I'm done. So I need to pour more energy into the activity.

But thanks for the support! I'd be satisfied with my life if I left my mark in the form of a really solid vinyl LP if nothing else.