i cant write lyrics, need help

Writing Lyrics

(brand new to the board; hello!)

At first, I didn't even bother with lyrics; I wrote instrumental tracks, learned how to compose well and how to properly play and record what I'd written.

Then one day I started fooling with lyrics, and they -sucked-. But once in a while, a bad lyric that I couldn't get past would change to a better one that made the song more or less write itself. After a few of those happened, my confidence level went right up, and my lyrics improved dramatically.

For instance, I had a chorus (that my wife insisted was not a chorus, and she turned out to be right) that was something like "Only three short months, but they'll be long (belong) to you" -- which is crap -- but it fit the music I'd written.

Weeks later I found out a good friend was depressed, and so I decided to write her a song telling her that being her wasn't so bad -- and decided to call it "I wanna be Dawn Greer". Well, that fit perfectly over "Only three short months", so I now had to replace "but they'll be long to you", and wrote "say everything Dawn would say" -- and suddenly, the song wrote itself:

I wanna be Dawn Greer
say everything Dawn would say
I wanna be Dawn Greer
do everything Dawn Greer's way
have a totally Dawn Greer day

(bridge)
I wanna sing to her on her front lawn
I wanna worship at the church of Dawn
I wanna do it even though I know it's wrong

(chorus)
I wanna be Dawn
but there's only one Dawn
I wanna see Dawn
'cuz there's only one Dawn

Still crap? Yeah, but incredibly easy to write -- once I had the first line, everything else wrote itself in a few minutes (the final song is much longer). And there's nothing deep, or emotional, or -important- in these lyrics -- it's just entertainment, and that's a much easier place to start than deep and dramatic.

And the "success" of this song (it ended up voluntarily on iPods of people I had never met, who requested copies) gave me the confidence to realize that if lyrics made me happy, they'd probably make other people happy, too.

Also, I recommend trying a few shots at songfight (songfight.org), because there's nothing that will force you to write lyrics fast -- good or lousy -- like a deadline. Especially when you've been given a title.

Hope that helps.

EDIT: one of my favorite "bad lyrics begat good lyrics" moments was writing a song for songfight with the title "Man Speaking German". I was walking through a parking lot after work, trying out different things, and I came up with "The man speaking german took my passport away" -- crap, eh? -- which was setting me up for a painfully depressing song about the holocaust. It struck me as so awful, in fact, that I thought "god, anything but a passport!" and threw "woman" in there instead. "The man speaking german took my woman away" is a -much- better lyric, and in a few moments I had a complete song about someone travelling through europe whose girlfriend is stolen away by a man speaking a language that he himself cannot speak. Good times.
 
another thing i do when i'm trying to come up with lyrics is that i usually draw a little picture or something, just make a quick sketch on the page where im gonna write my lyrics and it seems to help me get the "creative juices" a'flowing.

;)
 
Anthrax said:
when i write lyrics, they make no sense, and i always scrap my ideas cause they never lead to anything.

what are some good topics to write about, stuff like that.
Click to expand...

I have the same problem all the time, don't worry about it that makes it worse.
If it doesn't make sense the first time thats cool because your gonna re-write loads of time over before its done so the sense filters in along the way.
Currently writing a song based on a writers block. I was so frustrated at getting stuck that I wrote about it and its turning out ok at the moment.
If it helps try to write the whole thing down really quick and then go back and work on it whenever a new rhyme, idea, whatever pops into your head. Spontaneous always turns out better than forced.
As for good topics, i don't think there is such a thing, I mean, if writers block is a topic, I wouldn't say its a good one but its going well.
Just have some emotion behind what you write, helps to get it across instead of just sounding like a lyrical fill-in.
Sorry for the essay, if this helps cool, if not different things work for different people. X
 
anthrax

you really just have to write what you feel and it helps if what you feel is something that paople can relate to for instance listen to tupac's dear mama that is what he felt about his mother but we can all relate to it because we have all been in similar situation hope that helps
 
That's my weakest area. Writing the music seems to come easy. I can usually bang out a song in an hour or less, and am very proud of it. Whether it's any good or not is questionable. My lyrics are laughable, and perhaps gay-sounding, although I myself am not.
 
baby please don't go
baby please don't go
baby please don't go down to new orleans
you know i love you so
baby please don't go

genius in simplicity... its easy to over think lyrics, imo or personal exp.

we can clean it up until there's no interest or freshness in it any more,
not even for the person writing it, let alone someone else to like it!

anyone ever got the best responses from the "5 minute- quickie bllsht song" that really meant nothing?
and in contrast, get a blank frozen face smile response from something you labored over for 8 weeks trying to make it Universally accepted and politically correct and perfect!
whats up with that?
 
wang dang I want a sweet poontang...
arang a dang adang a rang oh yeah

Written and composed by Ted Nugent

geez.
 
Tom Paxton says he writes about 8 hours a day. He feels happy if he gets a decent song in a month--most of the stuff he writes, according to him, is crap. (I would call it "practice", but that's just me.) Advice from this: Keep at it!

Lyrics like "Sha-na-na-na sha-na-na-na-na...get a job..." seem pretty lame but have lasted for years. Some songs have a verse, a bridge, a chorus, an instrumental break, repeat to make 3-4 minutes. Some songs don't have even have the bridge. Advice from this: Even a short, seemingly non-sensical bit of lyric can become something memorable. Don't just scrap what you think are bad lyrics.

Not important advice, perhaps, but the main point is to have faith, practice, and keep at it! You may never come up with anything, but then again, you might. Persistence, sir! Persistence!
 
Bear in mind that lyrics and poetry is as hard and much of an art as guitar playing or any other form of expression. Everyone can't write lyrics just like everyone can't play guitar, at least not like Jeff Beck does. Or...well, you get my point I think.

Pratice writing. And always write from your heart. Play something and sing jibberish or random words. That often gets people going and you can get some good inspiration that way.

Just my 2 cents.
 
You might also want to keep in mind that the Travellin' Wilburys wrote a song by cutting out advertisements from a magazine, throwing them on a table in a jumble, and then stringing them together into a song.
And it worked, sort of. At least it played pretty well on the radio for a while. I think it was their first album--check it out for inspiration.
 
I've done this a few times with a mate, and we wrote a couple of good songs which unfortunately we managed to lose. Ok, you wait till really late at night, till you're at the stage where you start dozing every few minutes then grab a pad and start writing anything(sentencies if possible), especially as you're dozing off. You wake up in the morning and there's a load of words on the page, most of which is shite, but you get a few good lines out of it, and from there you start writing, the first few lines are always the worst. :D
 
for me, my best lyrics a sparked by something i either really like, or absolutely hate... i'm often 'inspired' by something i hear on the news or read in the newspaper - tends to make my songs quite political and arguably a bit OTT.

for me, it also helps Not to have 'a process' - like a step by by step guide that i tick off. if i'm messing around on guitar, and find a chord sequence, or even an effect i like, then i might make that into the very bare bones of a song. if i conciously sit down to write, it's often lyrics first, with no structure at all - more of a poem or story than anything - anything can happen after that. maybe i'll strum some chords randomly while humming a melody and thinking about the words. maybe i'll 'force' the words around a chord sequence i was messing around with 6 months ago. its often a long and painful process, that i can't get enough of :).

Andy
 
Talk to yourself, if you have the luxury of privacy. If not, there's always your car. I've gotten some great ideas out of listening to myself bitch & moan about someone or something that happened.

Also, listen to conversations going on around you. The best lyrics use natural speech rhythms anyway.

Throw in a few "baby baby baby's" & there you go.
 
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