Writing song lyrics for dummies (written by joni)
Intro
This is jonis accumulated knowledge and tips from the past couple months contained withing a single document, i look to help many other producers to improve their lyricsm and find out about how beautiful expressing through words can be. Please never forget the main and most important tip: Dont be boring!
Some good places to start are :
• Rhyme schemes (ABAB rhyme schemes and variations), you can use sites to help you find rhymes or synonyms, just be cautious to not use random words you dont know the meaning of! try rhyming with meaning.
• Set up a theme please for the love of god it can be anything! quick example: song about running out of battery on your phone as an analogy to mental health's rotting, decaying life, etc, etc.
• Divide your songs in verses, chorus, bridge, intro, outro, etc.
• Consistent verses (irregular syllables on bars of the same verse tend to be less appealing to the listener, they can work but only if you know how to use them)
Working with different themes
For starters you should decide a mood and its lyrical weight; is the song silly? is it serious? does it convey a personal topic or a day to day situation? do you want to use lots of literary devices? or do you want simple lyrics.?
Usually serious and personal topics go well with deep and convoluted lyricism while more casual topics can benefit from a simpler form of writing. that doesnt mean they cant coexist with the other, in fact it can serve well as a meta juxtaposition, but it takes a bit more skill to make that work.
Once thats done you can move into the main topic where theres really millions of options you can pick from, the fun of it is thinking about it and coming up with your own ideas, it is also not wrong to take inspiration from other writers so dont overthink it too much.
Dont be shy to look up rhymes, synonyms, and stuff that would make you think youre not a good writer because youre looking them up, theres lots of words and youll not always remember every single one, BUT PLEASE make sure to research what the words youre using mean and have them connect with meaning. We all start somewhere so dont judge yourself too harshly if you arent comptent with your writing yet, as many other things in the music tree, its also a skill thats learned over time.
Theres multiple excercises that reinforce this ability, here are some fun ones you can write stuff about to practice, wheter it be a poem, a short story, or a song (ordered from easiest to hardest)
▪ A washing machine as allegory to the ever-spinning world
▪ A public restroom toilet thinking about all the markings in the wall surrounding it.
▪ The grim reaper choosing to wear a black outfit instead of a gray one from the perspective of its schyte inclined in a wall next to it.
Lyrical devices!?
Other useful things that are less impportant but can be that extra sparkle in the lyrics can be the use of lyrical/literary devices, they are ways lyrics are used to tell a story or conjugate sentences rhytmically and logically, here are some of the ones i like to use:
• Alliterations: A repetition of a consonant in consecutive words, like in tongue twisters: "peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers" it's something i've seen artists like Jamie Paige use a lot (example, birdbrain: "bilious baby braying babble, bent her beak", cadmium colors: "prosaic practice of depravity"). do be careful of where you use them, since most of the times its difficult to make sense of them.
• Onomatopeias: The wording of sounds: "buzz" (bee) "meow" (cat) "boom" (explosion)
• Juxtapositionin: Its a parallel; placing two contrasting things next to eachother, it's used to show the relationship between the two things mentioned. this can be used to describe scenes, characters, ideas and images: "i miss you like a lost city misses its bell tower"
• Motifs (not to be confused with leitmotifs, which refer to specific characters or ideas): They refer to recurring elements that help the song have coherence, things like short lines (think of the verse "baby do you know what you want to hear" on the constant companions album by jamie paige) or a rythmic phrase
• Similes: Comparisons of two ideas using words: "like", "as". example: "she was dry like the summer desert"
• Symbology or symbolism: The usage of objects, people, and ideas to represent a deeper theme: doves represent peace, roses represent love, etc. the beauty of symbolism is that it allows the listener to interpret it as they wish
For a full list of the rest of lyrical devices, you can visit: https://literarydevices.net/
-# should clarify that similes and juxtapositions are not the same, a juxtaposition does not require connecting words to present a parallel, but it is often harder to pull off in songs, and it's rather used more often in poetry and novels: "Towering over a hood, sits the biggest oil extraction plant"