Songwriting: Melody and lyrics

Finding a Great Melody By Experimenting With How You Say Your Lyric

Lyrics and melodies go hand in hand when you’re writing songs. In truth everything needs to partner up well in order for a song to sound great, but that particular partnership between lyrics and melody is perhaps one of the most crucial ones. But how do you ensure that your melody is properly supporting both the […]

The Bee Gees

Songwriting as Storytelling

Most song lyrics tell a story, whether it recounts a series of events in chronological order, or just simply implies a story. In fact, it’s probably true to say that most songs just imply a story, and we fill in a lot of details as the listener. There are any number of examples of what I’m […]

Songwriting

The Five Most Important Tips For Writing Powerful Song Lyrics

You might think that the topic of your song is going to be the most important part of writing a good song lyric, but that’s not the case. Most listeners can enjoy a song even if the lyrics are so abstract that they don’t even know what the song is about. Lennon & McCartney’s “I […]

Writing great song lyrics

What to Do About Disorganized Song Lyrics

Most song lyrics tell a story, but not usually in the “first this happened and then that happened” way. They largely resemble having a conversation with someone, a conversation where your side is frequently the only side that gets heard. “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting 10-eBook Bundle” covers every aspect of how to write great […]

Writing Lyrics

Rewording a Sentence to Find a Lyrical Gem

Coming up with song ideas is hard. You start down a path and then you realize that whatever you thought your song was going to be about is just leading to dead ends. There are lots of ways to stimulate your imagination. Sometimes just picking up a pencil and writing, stream-of-consciousness-style, can yield surprisingly good […]

Songwriter writing lyrics

Does Good Grammar Matter in a Song Lyric?

It’s not hard to find songs that use slang or grammatical and spelling “errors” in the title or lyric. Lots of “ain’t”, “gonna”, and also a lot of dropped g’s as in Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’”. I occasionally get messages or emails from songwriters asking what I think of grammatical correctness in a […]