Recently  I was listening to the song “A Long December” by Counting Crows and some of the lyrics really stood out to me, in a positive way. This made me dig a little deeper to find out why.   Overall, the song’s about loss. With that in mind, the one section of lyric that [...]

  Ending a song with a punch line is a playful way to take everything you’ve said in your song up until the very last line and turn it on its head.   Look at the lyrics from Train’s song, “I’m Not Waiting In Line.”     Verse It’s clear to see that you’re down [...]

  Sometimes when you’re writing a melody, you don’t know where you should go with it. Maybe you came up with a good melodic motif, but you don’t know how much you should repeat it, or how quickly you should change it.   If that sounds like a rut you’ve been in, then I have [...]

  When you write a song, think of it as something that will last forever. Sure, musical styles will change over time and that’s okay and expected. However, there are a couple of things you can avoid, lyrically, that can help preserve your song as time moves along. Avoid Phrases of the Minute A lot [...]

  Being music-minded when you’re writing lyrics can prevent them from sounding wordy. Wordy lyrics can negatively affect your melody. For that reason, I want to address how you can write lyrics that can easily being sung in a melody. The Spoken Rhythm The rhythm of a line happens as a result of a pattern [...]

  Lately I’ve been delightfully addicted to the song “I Won’t Give Up,” by Jason Mraz. Intuitively, I realized that it does a really good job of holding my attention and making want to hear it… often. Aside from saying something vague like “it has a catchy melody,” I decided to dig a little deeper [...]

  By now you’ve probably heard me talk about the idea of a melodic motif. It’s a small chunk of melody that’s repeated, but modified to stay interesting, yet familiar, as a song moves along. Usually, I make the argument that the motif itself has to undergo some sort of change as it repeats, so [...]

  Sometimes it may be appropriate for your melody and lyrics to sound sped up within your song. Maybe you’d want to do this to sprinkle a little contrast into your song, or maybe your lyrics deal with the idea of speed, or quickness and you want to incorporate prosody into your work, so your [...]

  A lot of songwriters don’t know how long to make the intro to their song. Ultimately, it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish with your song. If you just write for yourself and think really long intros are cool, then by all means go for it. On the other hand, if you’re trying [...]

  It’s important to make your chorus stand out from the rest of your song, since it’s usually your song’s central element. With that in mind, we’re going to look at a few ideas for creating a successful chorus. Musically Generally, the music in your chorus is going to be the catchiest, or hookiest part [...]

  Painting a very specific picture with your lyrics is an important skill to develop. A great way to write detailed lyrics that will pull listeners into your story is to talk to the five senses.   For that reason, Pat Pattison, who has authored several great books on writing lyrics, developed an exercise called [...]

  There are many different ways to use rhyme as a strategy to enhance what your lyrics mean. In this article, I want to show you how you can use rhyme to group similar ideas within your lyrics.   Let’s back up for a second. Above all else, rhyme is a sonic connector. That’s what [...]

  Songs are usually the most effective when the lyrics tie into the mood of the music. You may have heard a simplistic example of this by being taught that songs about happy things should be played in a major key, while more depressing songs are more appropriate to be in a minor key. This [...]

  A lot of songwriters are so consumed with writing a great chorus they sometimes forget they don’t have to write a chorus at all! The AABA song structure is one of the most common types of song structures and it doesn’t feature a chorus.   It’s not quite as popular as songs that rotate [...]

  Lyrics usually work best when they sound natural and conversational. Songwriters tend to twist and tweak the lines in their lyrics in a lot of different ways to get them to fit into their songs. That results in lyrics that don’t sound natural when we hear them in our melodies.   One way we [...]