Writing Better Lyrics Read online

  more than friends

  set me free

  end it all

  fooling around

  work it out

  had your fun

  heaven above

  true to you

  done you wrong

  break these chains

  kiss your lips

  back to me

  take it easy

  falling apart

  make you stay

  can't live without you

  taken for granted

  asking too much

  somebody else

  lost without you

  no tomorrow

  break my heart

  safe and warm

  give you my heart

  try one more time

  broken heart

  aching heart

  can't go on

  all we've been through

  want you / need you / love you

  keep holding on

  end of the line

  now or never

  always be true

  hold on

  over the hill

  pay the price

  never let you (me) go

  know for sure

  right or wrong

  rise above

  hold me tight

  what we're fighting for

  all we've done

  tear me apart

  you know it's true

  worth fighting for

  play the game

  hold me close

  nothing to lose

  see the light

  forget my foolish pride

  losing sleep

  oh baby

  drive me crazy

  treat me like a fool

  all my dreams come true

  going insane

  rhyme or reason

  Clichés come effortlessly. It's no sweat to string them together and feel like you've said something:

  She sits alone all day long

  The hours pass her by

  Every minute like the last

  A prisoner of time

  It does say something, just nothing startling. It doesn't yank you by the hair into her room. No humming fluorescent lights. No faded lace curtains. You get to nap securely at a distance, untouched, uninvolved. Getting to the good stuff is harder work. Though clichés are great in a first or second draft as place markers for something better, don't ever mistake them for the real thing:

  She's wheeled into the hallway

  Till the sun moves down the floor

  Little squares of daylight

  Like a hundred times before

  CLICHÉ RHYMES

  When you hear one of these, no need to lose sleep wondering what's coming next. Plop. Naptime.

  hand / understand / command

  eyes / realize / sighs / lies

  walk / talk

  fire / desire / higher

  kiss / miss

  burn / yearn / learn

  dance / chance / romance

  forever / together / never

  friend / end

  ache / break

  cry / die / try / lie / good-bye / deny

  tears / fears

  best / rest / test

  door / before / more

  love / above / dove

  heart / start / apart / part

  hide / inside / denied

  wrong / strong / song / long

  touch / much

  word / heard

  begun / done

  arms / charms / harm / warm

  blues / lose

  true / blue / through

  lover / discover / cover

  pain / rain / same

  light / night / sight / tight /

  stronger / longer

  fight /right

  take it / make it / fake it / shake it

  maybe / baby

  change / rearrange

  knees / please

  Most cliché rhymes are perfect rhymes, a good reason to stretch into other rhyme types — family rhyme, additive and subtractive rhyme, and even assonance rhyme. These imperfect rhyme types are guaranteed fresh, and most listeners won't notice the difference.

  CLICHÉ IMAGES

  These have been aired out so much they are mere whiffs of their former selves:

  The best cure for cliché images is to dive into your own sense pool and discover images that communicate your feelings. What did your lover say? Where were you? What kind of car? What was the texture of the upholstery in the backseat? You get the idea.

  CLICHÉ METAPHORS

  Review chapter three, “Making Metaphors.” There's no reason to keep sleepwalking in these yellow fogs.

  Storm for anger, including thunder, lightning, dark clouds, flashing, wind, hurricane, tornado

  Darkness for ignorance, sadness, and loneliness, including night, blind, shadows

  Fire for love or passion, including burn, spark, heat, flame, too hot, consumed, burned, ashes

  Rain for tears

  Seasons for stages of life or relationships

  Prison, Prisoner used especially for love, includes chains, etc.

  Cold for emotional indifference, including ice, freeze, frozen

  Light for knowledge or happiness, including shine, sun, touch the sky, blinded by love, etc.

  Walls for protection from harm, especially from love

  Broken heart too numerous to mention

  Drown in love

  I've listed enough clichés to keep whole herds of puppies asleep for decades. If you have a barking dog in the neighborhood, instead of yelling or telephoning your neighbor, try reading aloud from these lists in its general direction.

  FRIENDLY CLICHÉS

  In some cases, you can use a cliché to your advantage. Put it in a context that brings out its original meaning or makes us see it in a new way. For example, I'll be seeing you, as a cliché, is a substitute for so long or good-bye. When Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal set it up, it's brand new:

  I'll be seeing you

  In all the old familiar places …

  I'll be looking at the moon

  But I'll be seeing you

  This passage implies good-bye, but only as an overtone of the primary meaning. The result is a combination: After we say good-bye, I'll see you everywhere.

  David Wilcox slants it's all downhill from here to his advantage in “Top of the Roller Coaster” with this setup:

  Say good-bye to your twenties

  Tomorrow is the big Three-O

  For your birthday present

  I've got a place where we can go

  It's a lesson in motion

  We'll ride the wildest ride

  We're going to climb to the top of the roller coaster

  And look down the other side

  Let me ride in the front car

  You ride right behind

  And I'll click my snapshot camera

  At exactly the right time

  I'll shoot back over my shoulder

  Catch the fear no one can hide

  When we tip the top of the roller coaster

  And look down the other side

  Over the hill

  So when the prints come back

  We can look at that unmistakable birthday fear

  Like your younger days are over now

  And it's all downhill from here

  He also gets a new look at over the hill and tiptop while he's at it. Neat.

  Without a terrific setup, duck whenever you see a cliché. They come easy and from all directions, so it's difficult not to be infected. Your own senses and experiences are your best protection. So is brutal and resolute rewriting. I don't mean to sound revolutionary, but you might also try a diet of good literature and poetry. You are what you eat.

  EXERCISE 10

  For fun, try these two experiments. First, come up with your own lists of clichés, at least as long as my list above. (It won't be difficult.) Second, string some of yours and mine together into a verse / choru
s / verse / chorus lyric, making sure nothing original sneaks in.

  Knowledge brings responsibility. Now that you know the fundamental cause of puppy narcolepsy, you have a special responsibility to keep your writing sense-bound and original. No one likes a person who puts puppies to sleep.

  CHAPTER SIX

  PRODUCTIVE REPETITION

  In its simplest form, this is the basic rule of songwriting: Keep your listeners interested all the way through your song. Get them with you from the beginning with a strong opening line, then keep them with you the rest of the way. Whether they stay or go is up to you.

  In most songs, you'll repeat a line (refrain) or a section (chorus) two or three times. The danger is that once your listeners have heard something once, it will be less interesting the second and third time — like once, it will be less interesting the second and telling the same person the same joke three times in a row: Once you've heard it, it doesn't give you anything more the second or third time.

  Your job as a songwriter is to make your repetition interesting and productive so that the same words deliver more each time. A bit of a challenge, eh?

  It might be helpful to think about a song as a stack of boxes that are connected to each other, each one getting progressively larger. Think of each one gaining more weight, the last being the heaviest of the lot.

  The first box begins the flow of ideas, introducing us to the song's world. The second box continues the idea, but from a different angle, combining the weight of the first box with the weight of the second. The last box builds from the first two, introducing its own angle and combining its idea with the first two, resulting in the heaviest box.

  Assume you're working with the idea “I'd just like to know.”

  Box 1: “Hi, it's nice to see you. You're looking good, and you're looking really happy. Are you? I hope you don't mind my asking. I'd just like to know.”'Sup I'd just like to know

  Let's try to advance the idea and make the second box gain weight.

  Box 2: “When you left, did you already know you were moving in with him? When I was out of town, did he come over to your place? Did you hide that picture of us you kept on your dresser? I suppose it doesn't matter now, but I'd just like to know.” D'ja cheat? I'd just like to know

  See how the idea gains weight with the new information? It combines the first box, the meeting, with some history, giving the second box more weight and giving more impact to the title.

  Box 3: “For me, a relationship is all about honesty. I want to be able to say everything to you, and for you to say everything to me. I don't want any secrets, no matter what. You could have told me about him. I wouldn't have tried to stop you. I'd just like to know.”

  Box 3 combines or resolves all the information, and delivers the point of the song. It's often the “why” of the song — why I'm saying all this to you. It weighs the most.

  Now, it's simply a matter of actually writing the song, but writing it knowing where you're going. You have an outline, a scaffold to hang your song on. You can bang around inside each box without being afraid of getting lost.

  And don't be afraid to call your six best friends — who, what, where, when, why, and how — to ask them for specific suggestions. They're always helpful, especially when and where.

  VERSE DEVELOPMENT

  Your verses are responsible for keeping listeners interested. The verses develop your idea; they are the basic tool to advance your concept, plot, or story. They get us ready to hear each chorus or refrain — they control the angle of entry and the way we see the repeated elements. Like the paragraphs of an essay, each one should focus on a separate idea.

  Say you've written a song with only verses, and the verse summaries go something like:

  Verse 1. The sheriff is the toughest man in town.

  Verse 2. He is very strong and has a fast gun.

  Verse 3. Everyone in town knows the sheriff is tough. They are afraid of him.

  The ideas don't move much. These verses say pretty much the same thing in different words. Obviously, you'd probably have written it in more interesting language, using sense-bound images and metaphors, but no matter how you polished the language, it would only disguise the fact that something important is missing: development.

  The only real fix is to take the idea new places:

  Verse 1. The sheriff is the toughest man in town.

  Verse 2. He is obsessed with a beautiful woman.

  Verse 3. She is married to the weakest man in town.

  The language is still bland and imageless. Yet now we want to know what happens next. We had no such curiosity about the first sequence.

  REPETITION

  When you add a repeated element to these verses (a refrain or chorus), development becomes even more important. Stagnant verses will make your repeated element stagnant, too. The boxes won't grow. Watch:

  Box 1

  The sheriff is the toughest man in town.

  Beware, beware. All hands beware.

  Box 2

  He is very strong and has a fast gun.

  Beware, beware. All hands beware.

  Box 3

  Everyone in town knows the sheriff is tough.

  They are afraid of him.

  Beware, beware. All hands beware.

  The refrain suffers from the same disease as the verses: stagnation. Boredom is amplified. The boxes, at best, are all the same size — they don't gain any weight. More likely, the boxes lose weight. You can feel the letdown when you get to the second and third boxes. You can only fix stagnation by developing the ideas. Like this:

  Box 1

  The sheriff is the toughest man in town.

  Beware, beware. All hands beware.

  Box 2

  He is obsessed with a beautiful woman.

  Beware, beware. All hands beware.

  Box 3

  She is married to the weakest man in town.

  Beware, beware. All hands beware.

  Now each refrain gains weight. The boxes get progressively larger because the verse ideas move forward — they each introduce their own idea or angle. When a refrain (or chorus) attaches to verses that mean the same thing, the result is boredom. When it attaches to verses that develop the idea, it gains weight and impact. It dances.

  What about changing the chorus each time? Some songs do exactly that, but the definition of a chorus is “many people singing together.” If you change the words each time, you'll be the only one able to sing it the second and third time. One person singing alone is called a soloist, not a chorus. If you change the words to a refrain each time, it isn't a refrain, just additional material.

  Remember, you fix a stagnant chorus or refrain by doing the same thing you do if you have only verses — you develop the idea.

  Don't waste your verses. Don't let them sit idle waiting for the hook to come around and rescue them. Too often, there won't be anyone around to witness the rescue.

  PUT SEPARATE IDEAS IN SEPARATE BOXES

  Look at this lyric, “Strawberry Wine” by Matraca Berg and Gary Harrison:

  He was working through college on my grandpa's farm

  I was thirsting for knowledge and he had a car

  I was caught somewhere between a woman and a child

  One restless summer we found love growing wild

  On the banks of the river on a well beaten path

  It's funny how those memories they last

  Like strawberry wine and seventeen

  The hot July moon saw everything

  My first taste of love oh bittersweet

  Green on the vine

  Like strawberry wine

  I still remember when thirty was old

  And my biggest fear was September when he had to go

  A few cards and letters and one long distance call

  We drifted away like the leaves in the fall

  But year after year I come back to this place

  Just to remember the taste

  Of strawberry wine
and seventeen

  The hot July moon saw everything

  My first taste of love oh bittersweet

  Green on the vine

  Like strawberry wine

  The fields have grown over now

  Years since they've seen a plow

  There's nothing time hasn't touched

  Is it really him or the loss of my innocence

  I've been missing so much

  Strawberry wine and seventeen

  The hot July moon saw everything

  My first taste of love oh bittersweet

  Green on the vine

  Like strawberry wine

  What a nice lyric. The specific images really take you there, involve your own sense memories, involve you in the song. And I love the bridge, using the grandpa's fields as a metaphor for life and experience. And the chorus, from the title right on through until the end, grows each time we hear it.

  Who drinks strawberry wine? Kids. Strawberry wine has both the taste of soda pop (childhood) and the danger of alcohol (adulthood). Besides which, it's cheap. It's the perfect vehicle for a song about coming of age, moving from childhood to adulthood.

  Watch the boxes develop:

  Each new verse idea builds on the last and adds weight to the song, enlarging the boxes. Each line gains weight each time we see it. The last chorus is the most powerful.

  If we simply look at the line the hot July moon saw everything, we'll see the weight gain clearly: