writing lyrics with lots of "i/me/you/we"

[Tadpui]

Woh

I kept waking up every morning singing this silly thing since this thread started and felt compelled to commemorate it

 

[Nola]

Mid 90s wasn't bad at all, but there were two camps competing for the mainstream, and one of those camps was awful. The other camp was pretty awesome. Bands like Presidents of the US, Toadies (Do you want to die!!?"...how can you not love that part?), Green Day, Offspring, Eels, Dinosaur Jr, Modest Mouse, Weezer, Spacehog, Rage Against the Machine...I thought all that stuff was great. Bush isn't that level, but they had a few cool songs (Machinehead, glycerine) and weren't completely awful. I'd say bush were in between.

Then there was the bad stuff like mentioned...Hootie, Tool, Matchbox20, etc. The bad stuff won out and we wound up with Creed, Nickleback, and pansy country infused stuff.

And I agree with Greg that "indie" is totally pansy now. I don't know what happened, but people post things in the mix clinic they call indie, and it's not what I associate with that word at all. I think of lo-fi stuff with attitude. Even if it was mellow it used to have attitude at least. The "indie" now is really pansy and mellow and sterile with no attitude, energy, or anything. I think Fleet Foxes is kinda responsible for that, and home recording to a degree... that everyone thinks they can produce sensitive tunes or EDM to get chicks and the higher audio quality takes out a lot of "it" factor.

 

[larssonn]

i realized a lot of my lyrics have these words in them, and it's making me feel self-indulgent.
is it normal to have so many of these works? i..me..you...we...us. etc?

i think of a song like blackbird, stairway to heaven, john wesley harding, etc. it's very rare to see anything about self in them. my songs are personal so it makes sense to use i, but i don't want to annoy listeners by being self indulgent. any thoughts on this?

Have a look at the lyrics of Radiohead's 'Creep'. That's full of 'I'. Great song.?

 

[ccarnucci]

The use of I, we, them etc. Doed not relate to self indulgence...they relate to perspective. Self indulgence is denoted by feeding your ego, belief or conceit in your perspective.

 

[jgwire]

i was watching a video by a big name songwriter and hit maker talk about tips...He said people want to hear about their lives and struggles, not yours. So he said he very rarely uses first person -- the "I" way -- until the chorus, if at all. He said changing it in the chorus is a good way to signal a change. He said you can take a first person lyric, especially one that has a lot of feeling, and easily turn it into a second person song -- the "You" way. I think this is solid advice, but there are exceptions for everything. It all depends on the lyric's content and feel. For me, I usually keep whatever I write first and not edit myself in the writing process. Sometimes I change it later.