Does anyone write lyrics?

TTony

My current, last and next submission into the Composition Challenge have been based on lyrics written by a friend about 40 years ago (kept for all that time more by accident than intent!).

And I'm running out of her songs now, so need some more inspiration for the music-side of things.

Her lyrics, as a teenager, were far better than anything I ever managed back then, or could probably do even now, so I've accepted that lyrics really aren't my "thing" and I'm not about to enrol on any of the many songwriting courses to learn the art.  

So what do others do for lyrics for their own creations?  Where/how do you get your inspiration?  Or anyone have a few sets of lyrics that they'd like someone to completely mis-interpret musically for then?   

I've thought about digging through old poetry books (or similar) to try to find sets of words that might work with music, but other than that, I'm out of ideas.

Petepassion

Is there nothing you can draw on emotionally from the past...or present?
A close friend died a couple of weeks ago, this brings up a lot of emotions. Doesn't have to be clever, just from the heart. I never worry about cliche's if the lyrics are real

DannyP

Three things I've learnt work for me:

- Leave yourself a voice note whenever you encounter, or dream up, a good line. However...

- Inspiration is a bit of a myth. Writing songs, for me, for the most part, happens when I sit down and work on it. Then...

- Forget writing a good song. Sit down and write a shit one. You might find there are good bits you can develop into something good.

TTony

Petepassion said:

I never worry about cliche's if the lyrics are real

That's my worry really - that anything I've ever attempted to write was so obvious, clichéd and would probably have earned me a D- in EngLit classes.

DannyP said:

Three things I've learnt work for me:

- Leave yourself a voice note whenever you encounter, or dream up, a good line. However...

- Inspiration is a bit of a myth. Writing songs, for me, for the most part, happens when I sit down and work on it. Then...

- Forget writing a good song. Sit down and write a shit one. You might find there are good bits you can develop into something good.

3 good pointers there - thanks @DannyP ;

thecolourbox

TTony said:

Petepassion said:

I never worry about cliche's if the lyrics are real

That's my worry really - that anything I've ever attempted to write was so obvious, clichéd and would probably have earned me a D- in EngLit classes.

That's pretty much 90% of music lyrics isn't it?

Petepassion

In 40 years of music the best songwriter I've ever met is the singer of our last band, he could have easily been up there the likes of Squeeze. Yet many of his lyrics were quite basic, just like the Beatles, but didn't detract from the song. For me, a great song is a song that moves you...and that can be in a variety of ways, not necessarily great lyrics.

Habanero

Yes I write lyrics. My current Composition Competition entry 'Minotaur' is about Internet trolls, after seeing the way some people behave on another non-guitar forum. The previous one was 'Soldier Soldier' and about WW1 and the war in Ukraine. The next one is autobiographical about things that have happened since I met my missus.

So most are about news events, personal experiences or things on TV. The later had me pen 'Tony' about the life and times of Tony Soprano, and 'We Hate You Simon Cowell' which needs no explanation.

There's actually a pretty decent documentary on Amazon Prime currently called 'It All Begins With A Song' about the Nashville industry, but it's not all country.

thecolourbox

What's your usual process of writing Tony? Are you a "put a tune to the lyrics" guy or a "put a lyrics to tune" fella?

In a similar way to point 3 in DannyP's post, you don't have to write the end lyrics right away - i find it's helpful to think in general what I'm trying to say or put across concept wise or mood wise, but try and say it with the tune first and foremost so the lyrics can be gibberish or a mixture of words and mmms or ahhs etc, but you'll eventually get a rhythm you can use to back fill with proper words and it's easier once you know the rhythm and rhymes you've already used to come up with something which sounds right with the tune, even if it doesn't quite make sense or isn't grammatically right.

For example one of the ones I'm working on at the moment originally had the following lyrics for the chorus:

I'm a pig without a blanket
I'm a sosig who is bare
The turkey choked and potatoes joked
'bout my bits out in the air.
I've got nothing left toulouse,
Although perhaps I'm not a
Pig without a blanket,
I'm a flippin' chipolata

If you have multiple verses you'll need to be able to do some element of that anyway to get your second verse, so it's a useful skill to have

I do sometimes get the odd phrases from somewhere that I will add a tune to, usually an opening line to the verse or the main feature of a chorus I suppose. My most recent goldmine for such things was when I was ripping a load of Beethoven CDs to mp3 and found various German, Scottish and Irish songs he'd arranged and they had some great titles. The one i'm working on for the composition challenge has a couple of lines taken from that in fact, but the rest i was just humming and making phonetic sounds like i was in the Sims until the tune and harmony flowed right, then i have been backfilling

I'm not saying I'm really that good at lyrics, in fact I'd definitely say it wasn't my strong point, and you may well have heard my stuff in the composition challenge and thought...jesus christ that's abysmal. But I'm usually happy with what I end up with in the context of the song itself and i usually find a way to make certain points I feel I need to get off my chest, abstracted enough to make them sound made up.

TTony

thecolourbox said:

What's your usual process of writing Tony? Are you a "put a tune to the lyrics" guy or a "put a lyrics to tune" fella?

My only recent experience is definitely tune to the lyrics, if only because the lyrics were already written (40 years earlier), though the latest one involved a lot more amendment of the original lyrics to fit the tune and structure, so it was a more organic / iterative process.

Generally I'll be noodling aimlessly on a guitar, stumble across something that sounds half-decent, but then don't have any lyrics to develop that half-decent something into an actual song, so a week or two later, it's forgotten.  Though I am now trying to capture more of it into my DAW so I don't forget everything.  It'll stay as vague musical drafts though, unless I come up with words.

Following DannyP's comment, I have just - it's sat here next to the laptop - dug out a small notebook so I can jot down odd phrases or themes if/when they occur to me, and maybe that'll lead me into developing more of the lyrics at a later date.

thecolourbox said:

I do sometimes get the odd phrases from somewhere that I will add a tune to, usually an opening line to the verse or the main feature of a chorus I suppose. 

Likewise - many of my odd phrases will probably have originated from a simple conversation with someone about something completely different.

TTony

Habanero said:

There's actually a pretty decent documentary on Amazon Prime currently called 'It All Begins With A Song' about the Nashville industry, but it's not all country.

I'll take a look - thanks @Habanero ;

Habanero

@TTony

Another possible source of ideas may be the podcast 'Sodajerker On Songwriting'. They have 250+ interviews with various kinds of writers, sometimes about a latest project, and others a career retrospective.

TheBigDipper

Song lyrics can take different forms.

 They can be meaningless - John Anderson (Yes) wrote so many things that sounded good when he sang them and they fitted the music brilliantly but meant nothing. Magma sing in a made-up language that (probably, who knows?) has no meaning but sounds great. 

 They can be personal and explain how you're feeling about something or about something that happened to you. Joni Mitchell told her life story through her lyrics. 

 They can be telling a made-up story (Richard Thompson is good at this, and so is Laura Marling) where it's all fiction or maybe in the first person but that person isn't you. 

 Sometimes I'll have a phrase or couplet that sounds great and write an entire song around it. 

 You might enjoy reading Jeff Tweedy's book "How To Write One Song". 

Good luck!

thecolourbox

What I do find problematic with my own writing, which would be more of an issue if I was actually trying to release anything commercially I suspect, is that the themes my lyrics tend to go down are quite repetitive (very apparent in my composition entries!). I write a lot about death and dying, about water and the sea, waiting, and generally waiting for death in the sea. It can get a bit bleak inside the creative bit of my mind at times. I think the answer to this specific, is not necessarily to read books on how to write songs or compose lyrics or whatever, it's just to read and listen to as much dialogue as possible, not music but just conversations or discussions, then you'll come across more varied themes or topics which might guide me away from the usual themes.

Or you can just accept your style is what it is and go for it

Petepassion

I spent the best part of my life just finding lyrics to fit my melodies, never great lyrics and sometimes embracingly awful.
Then about five years ago my life took a turn into utter chaos, euphoria and the depths of hell. For the first time in my life I didn't have to think about lyrics, they just came out. Good songs came from the happy stuff, but the best songs came from a dark place.

Petepassion

And as said above, don’t worry about making sense, sometimes I write about a moment in time, thoughts, feelings, stuff going on, doesn’t need to make sense to anyone else

Danny1969

I often come up with a single phrase I like , then I expand upon it. A lyric has to singable, it has to fit with the beat and flow nicely. So I never write lyrics on their own without the melody and phrasing . Once the process gets going though I find the song is leading me in a different direction than I was originally going and that excites me. 

There’s value in being a bit abstract. You can suggest something,  but the real power of lyrics comes when you leave some of the meaning to the listenener. For example you can have a line like 

“there’s too many flames still burning on too many lies”

That could be a reference to a lack of commitment in a relationship due to old flames or it could be a reference to green washing .. As a writer you don’t need to sew everything up nice and neat for the listener.. it’s better to make them think about the meaning and draw their own conclusions. 

Be descriptive and set scenes. Forget rhyming in the traditional sense … it’s more important to create an image. Take songs like Local boy in the photograph by stereophonic  or Kevin carter by the manics …. The lyrics set the scene in terms of where and when … abstract but enough information for the listener to build a picture mentally. 

I’m not great at lyrics myself but I’ve built up enough of a toolbox to craft them into something I’m not ashamed off … that’s the trick 

Jfingers

I write, a lot. Not just songs but poems and short stories too. The advice above about just getting something down then coming back to it later is exactly how I go about it.

I always try to scribble down something that catches my ear on the nearest piece of paper if my phone isn't to hand.

To me, if it felt inspirational at the time then it probably was for a reason.

Once upon a time I was standing next to a friends Dad in my local, swapping stories of our week. He said about one of mine, well J, things like that help to fill up a lifetime. I scribbled it on a beermat then carried on with my evening.

Around a decade later it became a big part of what I believe is in the top 3 songs I ever wrote.

If I'm at a computer I tend to have a desktop folder that I save writing to, jot it down in notepad then edit later before the lightning escapes the bottle as it were.

Sometimes for songs the music happens first and I try to fit words around it, other times it's the other way round, sometimes at least the first verse all comes out at once.

If the music is already there then scratch lyrics like the sausage one above work well, then it's a word puzzle...

Kurtis

I do write lyrics.

Not saying they're any good mind. 

It's like anything else the more you do it the better you get. 

thecolourbox

Jfingers said:

I write, a lot. Not just songs but poems and short stories too. The advice above about just getting something down then coming back to it later is exactly how I go about it.

I always try to scribble down something that catches my ear on the nearest piece of paper if my phone isn't to hand.

To me, if it felt inspirational at the time then it probably was for a reason.

Once upon a time I was standing next to a friends Dad in my local, swapping stories of our week. He said about one of mine, well J, things like that help to fill up a lifetime. I scribbled it on a beermat then carried on with my evening.

Around a decade later it became a big part of what I believe is in the top 3 songs I ever wrote.

If I'm at a computer I tend to have a desktop folder that I save writing to, jot it down in notepad then edit later before the lightning escapes the bottle as it were.

Sometimes for songs the music happens first and I try to fit words around it, other times it's the other way round, sometimes at least the first verse all comes out at once.

If the music is already there then scratch lyrics like the sausage one above work well, then it's a word puzzle...

Yes for example these lyrics became one of the best songs ever written...

Scrambled eggs

Have an omelet with some muenster cheese 

Put the dishes in the wash bin please 

So I can eat more scrambled eggs.  

Scrambled eggs

How I really, really love your legs
But not as much as I love scrambled eggs
Etc etc