Write Meaningful Lyrics

Strong lyrics can make or break a song. Lyrics give the listener something to relate to, something to sing along with, and they often contain the take away message of a song. Whether you're trying to write a protest ballad, a song about love and heartbreak, or simply the next big pop radio track, learning how to write meaningful lyrics can help you craft a strong, successful song.

Steps

Choosing a Subject

1. Decide what your song is about. The easiest way to begin writing meaningful lyrics is to first decide what you want your song to mean. Songs can be about virtually anything, but if you want your lyrics to be meaningful, you should choose a subject that resonates with you personally.
   • Brainstorm topics that are important to you. Think about what's going in your life, then expand outward to include your culture, your city, or even your country.
   • Think about any specific moments in which you really struggled with that topic/issue. For example, if you're writing about heartbreak, think about how you may have felt about yourself or another person when you've been abandoned. If you're writing about a cultural issue, think about a single moment that encapsulates your experience with that issue.
   • Consider both how you felt in the moment, and what you've learned after living through that experience.
2. Freewrite about your topic. Freewriting is an easy way to get started when you're experiencing writer's block. Once you've chosen a general subject for your song, set a timer for five minutes. While keeping your subject in mind, write continuously for the entire five minutes without stopping until the timer goes off.
   • Try not to think too hard about what to write. Simply jot down the first word/idea/image/sound that pops in your head when you think about your subject.
   • Don't worry about spelling, revision, or even if the words make sense. The goal is to keep writing in order to generate as many ideas as possible.
   • Keep writing until the timer goes off. Even if you have to write nonsensical words until the next word pops into your head, just keep your pen moving across the page.
3. Narrow down your list. Once the timer goes off and you have a list of random words all over the page, you'll need to review what you've written and choose the best words. Think about which words are the most evocative, the most image-heavy, the most emotional, and of course the most relevant.
   • Compile the best 10 to 12 words from your list.
   • If you've got over 12 really good words, that's okay. You don't have to use them all, and it may be more helpful to have a few extras that can get cut. If you don't have at least 10 words, try repeating the freewriting exercise.
4. Find connections. Now that you have a list of words, work on finding thematic connections between some of your words. Think about the associations you have with each word, and where those associations come from in your life.
   • As you come up with associations, you're lending emotions to the words. Even though it's currently just a list of random words, each word becomes meaningful as you build implicit and explicit associations to go with the list.
   • Write a few words, a phrase, or even a sentence about each word and the associations you have with them. These won't necessarily be your lyrics, but having these written "explanations" may serve as building blocks to your actual song lyrics.
5. Try writing short phrases. If you're comfortable at this stage of the writing process, try building your words and your explanations/associations into a series of short phrases. They don't have to be perfect, or rhyme, or even make sense at this point when pieced together. But you may be able to take one of these phrases and turn it into part of a verse, or even a central line in the refrain.
   • At this stage, you shouldn't be thinking about the complete song yet. Just let these incomplete/partial ideas come from your list, and keep the subject of your song in mind as you expand on and play with these short phrases.

Composing the Chorus

1. Brainstorm the hook. The hook is another term for the chorus. Before you start writing this part of your song, look back over the list of phrases you've composed. Think about which phrases contain the most powerful, vivid, or significant words that relate directly to your chosen theme/subject.
   • The chorus usually starts with a line or two that get expanded. The chorus doesn't have to rhyme, but it should be catchy and engaging to a listener.
   • Try expanding on the phrases that you feel are the most representative or evocative of your song's subject. Again, don't worry about perfection at this stage. Just try to expand and elaborate on what you've already written.
2. Determine your point of view. Any piece of writing can be written from multiple points of view, and as the writer it is your job to decide what point of view works best for the song. You may need to try out a few different points of view to determine what would be best for telling your particular story.
   • First person singular (using "I," "me," and "my") is one of the most popular points of view because it conveys personal experience while also being highly relatable. Someone listening to the song (and especially someone singing along!) will easily substitute herself for the "I" of a relatable song.
   • Just because first person point of view is easily relatable, it doesn't necessarily mean that's the right fit for your song. Perhaps your song is about bearing witness to something, rather than being a participant.
   • Play around with different points of view to see what feels right for what you're trying to say.
3. Build the chorus around emotion. Some of the strongest song choruses condense and express the raw, basic emotion at the heart of a song. There's no need to make the chorus extremely complex (unless that's your style and you're comfortable doing so). The key is to make the chorus emotionally resonant and thematic of the song's overall subject.
   • As you write the actual lines of your chorus, try to keep this part of the song centered on one single emotional point of focus. If your chorus tries to cover too much ground, it will be confusing, sloppy, or difficult for listeners to grab onto.
   • If you're having trouble deciding what the central emotion of the song is, go back to your chosen subject and your list of words/phrases and look for common themes. As long as your subject is relatively specific, you shouldn't have too hard a time coming up with corresponding emotions.
4. Play with the structure. Structurally, the chorus typically has between four and six lines. It can rhyme, but it doesn't have to. It can also contain a refrain, which is a lyric or phrase that is repeated at either the beginning or end of each chorus line. There are no hard and fast rules for how your chorus has to be structured, but at least knowing the basic format can help you craft a more structurally-coherent chorus.
   • A common format for chorus lines is AABA, which means the first, second, and fourth lines of a four-line chorus either rhyme or have a repeated phrase. The third line should be thematically related to lines one, two, and four, but might contain some twist to make it just slightly different.
5. Review what you've written. Once you have a few lines of the chorus, see if it all makes sense as a whole. Thematically, the chorus should basically condense your emotional reaction to the events, people, or places mentioned in the verses. Even though you haven't written the verses yet, your chorus at this point should still describe a clear reaction to whatever the song is about.
   • In a song about heartbreak, for example, the chorus should talk about the emotional reaction to losing someone. The verses may narrate how that heartbreak came about, but the chorus should be very emotional, image-based, and/or contain your reaction to the fallout of the relationship.
   • A protest song whose verses detail/narrate some social event (say, for example, the execution of an innocent person who's been wrongfully accused) should have a chorus that deals with what it all means - it may contain outrage, horror, grief, or something else entirely, but it functions as a sort of condensed reaction to the subject.

Writing the Verses

1. Determine the action. Now that you have a subject and your reaction to it, you'll need to more-or-less narrate the events that led to your reaction. One of the most important components of a song verse is the action that drives the song's story. Action also helps you show the reader what you're thinking or feeling without having to explicitly speak your thoughts/feelings.
   • The old writing adage "show, don't tell" applies to songwriting as well.
   • It's more powerful to hear a lyric like, "I write your name inside of every single heart I see" than to simply say "I love you." Saying "I love you" in a love song risks being boring to the audience, whereas some descriptive action that indicates love is much more meaningful.
   • If you're having a hard time with the action of the verses, look back at your original list, read over your chorus, and think about the central subject of your song. You should be able to come up with some concrete, descriptive action phrases.
   • If you're having trouble writing the narrative verses of your song, try writing a very short story about your song's subject. It might help you determine what the proper course of events would be, or it might simply get more ideas down on paper. Either way, it will only make your song stronger in the end.
2. Choose your imagery. Once you know the subject's action, you can use descriptive words to create corresponding imagery for the listener. Your imagery should build off of the action you've described, and the two should work together. For example, in a song about losing someone you love, you might include a line that describes falling on your knees and shedding tears. This is a strong visual cue that lets the audience know the extent of your relationship while also supporting your emotional reaction in the chorus.
   • Your audience won't be able to "see" the way you're feeling in the song, but image-heavy lyrics can help the audience have a visual of what you were doing when you felt that way. This makes it easier for the audience to grasp the meaning of the song. It also personalizes the story you're telling.
3. Add more detail. Details are what bring imagery to life. You can use strong, captivating adjectives and adverbs to build off of your imagery while also adding to it. For example, in a line that describes you falling on your knees while crying after losing someone, you might describe the way the ground felt under your knees, or how the wind felt blowing on your back. These kinds of specific details take an otherwise generic event and make it personal. Even if a reader has lost someone, she probably hasn't fell to her knees in the mud on a cold November morning, for example.
   • Don't use generic descriptions like "lonely" or "beautiful." Try to be as unique as possible, as this will make your song stand out from others on the same subject. It will also lend a lot of emotion and meaning to the verses, and might make them even more relatable.
   • Make your song specific. Describe the weather, or the time of year, or what someone in the song was wearing. This will help further bring the song to life by making it all about that event.
4. Find the right arrangement. Your verses might describe the central event chronologically (in the order that that event unfolded), or your verses might be more a general meditation on the event that led to your emotional reaction. Either way, you might need to play around with the structure of the verses to find an arrangement that works the best for your song. If your song is about an actual, dated event (like the death of someone important to you), then chronological arrangement is the most logical. If it's about a general life event (like a breakup), you can play around with the order of events a little more so that each verse builds toward the chorus.
   • The first line of every verse is important, but the first line of the first verse is arguably the most important line in the song. It's what will end up making the listener continue to listen or turn off your song.
   • Use the opening line of each verse to catch the listener's attention while also establishing the mood of what's to come in the song. You may want to make it declarative, as this can make your message more clear from the start.
   • Try to load the early parts of your song with one or two really catchy phrases or concrete images. This can help hold a listener's attention and curiosity.
   • Repetition is fine in a song (so long as there is some variance throughout the song), but steer clear of cliche. If the audience can predict what the next line will be without having ever heard the song before, your listeners won't find the song particularly interesting.
   • Remember, stick to one major theme/point/topic for the entire song! It's okay to talk about a few different events or memories in the verses, but they should all relate to the single event that the chorus so emotionally describes.

Finalizing Your Song

1. Decide if you'll use a pre-chorus. The pre-chorus leads the listener from the verse to the chorus. It often takes the narrative descriptions of the verse and segues into the emotional response of the chorus. The pre-chorus can either hint at the emotions of the chorus, or simply bridge the two parts of the song.
   • You don't necessarily need a pre-chorus. Not every song includes one. But when used properly, a pre-chorus can help set the stage for the chorus in a really effective way.
   • Jumping from the narrative verse to the emotional response might make sense without a transition, or it could feel awkward and incomplete. Only you can decide whether or not to include a pre-chorus, and it will probably boil down to what you feel your song needs to tell your personal story.
2. Put it all together. Now that your verses are descriptive narrations of an event and your chorus is a vivid emotional response, you'll need to start thinking of the song as an operational whole. The chorus should still be the emotional center of the song, but your verses should set up that emotional response. If your audience doesn't see the chorus as an understandable reaction to the verses, it might be confusing or even off-putting.
   • Even if the verses move through multiple events or various aspects of a single event, they should all work together to either address or build toward the emotional reactions that make up the chorus.
   • Keep the emotions to a minimum in the verses. Too much emotion all over the place might make the song difficult for a listener to process.
   • Make the verses concrete. They should actively describe people, places, circumstances, or situations, without any outpouring of emotion.
   • If you're having trouble coming up with a line in your verse, try humming the melody that goes with the rest of the song. Even without music, you should have some rough idea from the lyrics what the song might sound like. Humming or even singing "la la la" to the rhythm of your verse might help you improvise words or get a better feel for what could potentially work in that line.
3. Evaluate and revise. It can be difficult to tell whether or not your lyrics are meaningful to others. They are almost certainly meaningful to you, but if you've written them honestly and vividly, your lyrics will most likely resonate with your listeners.
   • Show your lyrics to a trusted friend, or sing the song for someone whose opinion you value.
   • Ask for honest feedback. If there is anything in your song that your friend feels is out of place, confusing, or disingenuous, ask her to let you know.
   • Make revisions as needed. Use the feedback you get from your friends to decide what parts of the song (if any) need to be reworked. Then follow the process through again to strengthen the part(s) of the song that need work.

Strengthening Your Lyrics with Melody

1. Know how to display determination. Depending on your song's subject matter, you might want lyrics that show your strength and determination (or the strength/determination of the narrator). The easiest ways to do this (beyond simply what the lyrics actually say on paper) is to alter your singing voice to convey that strength and determination of character.
   • Start the melodies of your song on the first beat of each bar for a really strong, consistent beat throughout the song.
   • Consider beginning the song in either a lower or higher range than you usually sing. Then when you raise (or lower, depending on how you started) your range during the chorus, it adds a noticeable emphasis to the lyrics and draws your listener's attention to the melody.
2. Add emotion to a song. If you're singing about love, loss, or heartache, your lyrics probably already convey a lot of that emotion. But the way you sing those lyrics can help strengthen the emotion of those verses and chorus even more.
   • Try to sing the majority of your song's melody in your vocal mid-range. That way you can add leaps in your vocal range, either upward or downward, to give more emotion to what you're saying.
   • You can hear a good example of this in Janis Joplin's version of "Me and Bobby McGee". She sings much of the song in her central vocal range, but whenever she raises or lowers her pitch, it immediately adds a sense of longing and sorrow to the song.
3. Find your natural rises and falls. As you shape the melody of your song, try speaking the lyrics to yourself in a somewhat melodramatic fashion. That will help you find where in your vocal range a given line should rise or fall, and it can also help you determine which words to accent, drag out, or cut short.
   • Play around with different accentuations and rises/falls. You may not get it right the first time - and that's okay. Your lyrics are already very meaningful and evocative, and the performance should come naturally once you're comfortable and confident with what you're saying.

Tips

• Don't try to rhyme every single line. It's okay if it works out that way, but it might feel forced or contrived to listeners.
• Write from your heart. Be honest about your experiences and your emotions. Your subject may have been written about before, but your song should be unique and personal.
• Keep a journal and write pieces of lyrics in it every time they come to your head.
• Rhyming small words with the exact same ending sound can often sound too simple or tedious. Instead, play with imperfect rhymes. An example would be rhyming a simple word such as "aim" with a larger word like "entertain."
• Learn to approach conventional song topics from unconventional perspectives. One way to do this is by using unique metaphors. For instance, in their 1972 album Exile on Main St, The Rolling Stones compare love to gambling (Tumbling Dice) and drinking (Loving Cup).
• Know your limits as a singer and try to write your lyrics to fall within your vocal range.
• If you make more than one song, make sure they're not too much alike. Don't reuse the same melodic arrangements over and over again. This grows tedious very quickly, and listeners won't be impressed.
• Avoid clichés.

Warnings

• Do not plagiarize someone else's lyrics. Not only is this completely un-creative, it could also cause a lot of problems over copyright infringement. Just trust in yourself and write from your heart.
• Also, try not to plagiarize the tune of a previously existing song, for the same reasons as above. Try to create something original.

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Sources and Citations

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