The Lame Lyrics Blues

  • Thread starter Thread starter seedyapartment
  • Start date Start date
Everyone here writes lame lyrics.
Join the club.
Doesn't matter if you're a woman or a man.
If it's good it's GOOD.
If it's bad it's BAD.
If you are a woman don't try to write like a man.
If you are a man don't try to write like woman.
I goes against nature.
The point won't be taken seriously since it's bogus.
There will always be something about it that is not right.
Lame lyrics are igonored with great music.
Average music and lyrics can be great with the right combination
of presentation and talent.
Great lyrics are fairly lame with crappy music.
****************
Don't alieniate yourself by insulting either gender or any race.
Don't divide your audiance with pollitics.
And above all don't say anything in this forum that the Jesus freaks
and Pollitically correct crowd will try to get you BANNED with.
****************
They can BITE ME.....NOW
 
Write the lame stuff when it comes to you, put it aside, bundle it up & send it to a publisher.
When the stuff YOU like arrives in your head DO IT. Don't expect that writing what you want to hear to come easily - work for and at it.
I write in an entirely different form to my listening tastes.
I don't have the skills to write what I REALLY like though I still try to.
I do like what I write and am not embarrassed by it. I put it up for comment & improvement. Afterall if I wrote like Cave or Costello or another of my preferred listens I wouldn't be doing me.
 
****************
Don't alieniate yourself by insulting either gender or any race.
Don't divide your audiance with pollitics.
And above all don't say anything in this forum that the Jesus freaks
and Pollitically correct crowd will try to get you BANNED with.
****************
They can BITE ME.....NOW

Someone feeling a bit paranoid today???? :eek:
 
Someone feeling a bit paranoid today???? :eek:

Never!
I'm the youngest old man here.
08/27/1952
Yeah I used some nasty words in a post.
I was a BAD BOY!!
I got some sage advise from our FEARLESS LEADER.
My post got deleted and my point will never be heard again.
Unless I say something like Metalica's singer sounds like
he got his balls caught in a VISE.
 
I've been writing songs for a few years now, and I find that alot of people around me like the lyrics. However, I can't help noticing that these people are my friends or kids in the neighborhood and things like that. My problem is that I personally don't like the lyrics of the songs I write.

I write the type of music that I don't like, and I don't want to. But since I'm a young female, it's kinda hard for me to write songs like Pete Townshend, Neil Young or Jim Morrison. I'm stuck with Michelle Branch and Ashlee Simpson-type pop ballads. In melody and in lyrics.

Does anyone else find that they have this problem? The kind where you write songs you don't particularily like? And does anyone have any advice?
We are often our own worst critic. I, for one, frequently think my lyrics suck. Of course, that means I work at them to try and make them better. Doesn't always help. Tom Paxton, who's been a successful professional songwriter for around 40 years says he writes about 8 hours a day, and gets maybe one halfway decent song a month. The rest he personally doesn't like.

Radiohead0709 had some good questions--are you writing for you or writing for the market? Is it your dream to write as an expression of your inner feelings, to say something important? It's very rare that those kind of songs make the mass market (but don't let that stop you from trying.)

On the other hand "Sha-na-na-na Sha-na-na-na-na" made it pretty big, because it was a fun song, not because it had incredible lyrics. IMHO, very few top 40 hits get there with great lyrics.

Nothing is stopping you from writing those either.

You may need to write the stuff you don't like to make enough money and earn enough respect to write and popularize the stuff you do like. The Beatles did Chuck Berry and other rock and roll classics while becoming popular enough for their own stuff to come through. (Listen to their early recordings from Germany.)

If you worry that only your friends will like your lyrics, and only because they're your friends, try posting a few on the web where anonymous people can praise them or rip them to shreds. That will give you some idea of the non-friend value of your songs. Write songs you like and post them as well. See how they go over. Maybe you can write songs like Pete Townshend, Neil Young or Jim Morrison.

You won't know till you give it a shot. And by the way, Thomas Edison said that he didn't fail 5000 times before making the light bulb, he simply discovered 5000 ways it shouldn't be done. Don't give up hope if someone doesn't like your work.

Cliched advice that has stood the test of time, but it's all I've got.
 
I write the type of music that I don't like, and I don't want to. But since I'm a young female, it's kinda hard for me to write songs like Pete Townshend, Neil Young or Jim Morrison. I'm stuck with Michelle Branch and Ashlee Simpson-type pop ballads. In melody and in lyrics.

Your gender and age are not sentencing you to imitate the other young women you mention, you are? If you do not like the lyrics you are writing then stop writing them.

Take a song by The Who, The Doors or anyone you like and try an imitate it? Then take a song by Nina Somone or Bessy Smith and imitate that? Listen to Elvis Costello, NIN, Fleetwood Mac, Metalica, Bowie and Bacharach all on the same play list.

If you want to be a song writer and singer then you need to develop your song writing craft and your own style - usually a hybrid of what has influenced you; the more diverse your influences the more original your style.

Originality may eventually lead to success, but it certainly guarantees happiness if the style is a genuine extension of your personality and the values that are important to you. Do you want to be a ‘star’ or do you want to be an ‘artist’?

As mentioned above, being able to create the ‘consumable’ pop hit may well be your ticket to be in the position to write and perform the ‘durable’ classic – but you need a game plan to get there – otherwise you’ll never know why your making ‘compromises’ along the way.

‘Loving, liking or hating’ lyrics is a luxury an artist can not have – judging them better or worse than previous, or understanding how to improve them, or knowing when to leave them to distil or throw then out completely or simply asking do they convey the feeling I want is much more important then how we feel about them.

The sculptress judges the chisel good, bad, better, worse – she does hate or love it, she uses it to create beauty the world didn’t know it needed.

HTH:o
 
First I believed Walter, then jdblessing1970 drags one out of the vault and makes me think 2005 is 2007 and now I'm writing advice to a 'young woman' who probably is old now (well at least 2 years older and wiser) - Where has reality gone? Where did the 2 years go? Where did seedyapartment go? Did she ever move to a nice place with more than entry level Ikea furniture (you know not the raw pine that sort of post university veneer finish!) Who is Walter? Why is Walter here? What does he want?

I'm adrift - if I don't hold onto the grass then I'll fall off the world! Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!
 
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