8 Tips For Writing Great Song Lyrics

Anyone can write good song lyrics. Sometimes I find myself whistling or humming catchy words that stick in my mind. Other times, I may jot down a few lines of poetry which could easily be turned into lyrics. Experts from the fields of music, songwriting and even psychology all agree this spontaneous childlike space is where most creative ideas are born. Sometimes our best work just happens when we don't have any expectations.

Take the song "Puff The Magic Dragon." It started out as a poem written by Leonard Lipton. While at Cornell, Lipton was a friend with a housemate of Peter Yarrow. In 1959 he wrote a poem about Jackie Paper who played with his imaginary dragon named Puff at a place near the sea called Honalee. Although Lipton forgot about the poem, Yarrow found it and put it to music. Yarrow began playing the song with his friends Paul Stookey and Mary Travers and the rest is history.

Even though spontaneity is a good starting point for lyric, most professionals follow a few basic rules.

1 Make The Storyline Consistent: "In Puff The Magic Dragon", Jackie Paper grows up, loses interest in his imaginary friend who "sadly slipped into his cave." If Lipton had ended his poem by talking about why he liked golf over tennis for example, the story would have fallen apart and most likely not caught the eye of Peter Yarrow.

2 Have A Catchy Title: Select a title that not only sets the scene for your storyline, but has a catchy sound to it. A few good titles that come to mind are: Feelings, White Christmas, A Dollar In My Jeans, Lady, Lady Lay, El Paso, I Love How You Love Me, Until It's Time For You To Go, Fever, Suspicious Minds, My
Way . . . the list goes on.

3 Use A Well-Defined Rhyming Pattern: Songwriters often speak of lyrics in terms of AB AB, AA BB or some other form. What they mean by this is that the last word in certain lines rhythm. Take a look at the lyrics to "Puff The Magic Dragon." In the first line, Lipton matched "sea" with "Honah-Lee" on the A line and "Puff" and "stuff" on the B line. This pattern is pleasing to the ear. [For a more elaborate discussion of lyric forms, take at any good book on songwriting.]

4 Use Inner Rhythms As Long As They Don't Break Up The Story Line: An inner rhythm is simply rhyming words in the middle as well as the last word of the line. Although this makes the line more interesting and pleasing to the ear, a mistake beginning songwriters often make is to force an inner rhythm whose meaning

doesn't exactly fit the story line.

5 Repeat Certain Words To Hook Your Listener: The concept of a "hook" is used in songs, stories, books, plays and movie plots. It is a word or two or theme idea that grabs the listener or viewer's attention and is repeated again and again throughout the work. In songs, the hooks is often times also found in the title. Take a look at the song "Feelings" by Albert Morris. How many times does the word "feelings" appear in the title and lyrics?

6 Learn From The Masters: Browse through songbooks at your local music store or check some out of the public library. You can bet great songwriters like Lennon and McCartney, James Taylor, Jim Croce, Paul Simon and Bob Dylan either incorporate these rules into their songs or decide to consciously break them because they have mastered basic lyric writing principles.

7 Corroborate With People At Your Same Or Better Skill Level: There's a reason why many of the world's most memorable songs were written by songwriting teams. The advent of the worldwide web has made it easy to meet and share your ideas and projects with individuals and also join groups like the Nashville Songwriters Association of America.

8 Be Original, Have Fun And Keep On Writing!!!