At its heart, imagery is a simple concept. When you write something that causes images in the mind of the listener, you’ve just made use of imagery. You could argue that imagery, therefore, happens all the time. I could say “I went to a baseball game this afternoon,” and you likely will get images in your […]
If you find it hard to create a melody that works with your lyric, it might be that you find the entire package of the musical side of things (melody, chords, rhythms, etc.) to be difficult. Some lyricists are good at creating images, and saying much with few words, but when it comes time to […]
It’s not hard to find songwriters who find the writing of the lyrics to be the most difficult part of the process. You know what you want to write about, but every time you try to put it in the form of a lyric, your words sound confused, disorganized, or just plain corny. It’s time to […]
There’s an automatic assumption by many that song lyrics must rhyme. In actuality they don’t. Whether to rhyme or not is often dictated by the genre. Country and pop lyrics are more likely to feature rhyming, while other genres (progressive rock, for example) may not make any attempt to rhyme. To Rhyme So let’s look […]
Songwriters like to talk about a song’s message — the backstory we pick up from the lyrics. There’s a common belief that the best songs are the ones that present a cogent, powerful (even if subtle) message. But message is a tricky concept, because in fact, history shows that the best songs — the ones, for […]
Take a look at pop song lyrics, and you’ll see everything from straight-ahead, easy-to-follow, to something more abstract. The easy-to-follow lyrics might be something like “Thinking Out Loud” (Ed Sheeran, Amy Wadge, Julian Williams): When your legs don’t work like they used to before And I can’t sweep you off of your feet Will your […]
