Confession To You

HOW TO WRITE SONGS.3 ~~

Part 3 of 6: Finding Your Words

1) Show, don't tell. "I'm so sad, I just feel bad, my girlfriend left me today..."....No. Don't do this. This is a fast way to make your song forgettable. The best lyrics, like any good writing, get us to feel emotions because they capture that experience, not because they tell us what to feel. Try to write about what it's like to feel something, instead of just telling your audience.

A good example of an alternative to this "I'm so sad" thing is from Damien Rice's song The Animals Were Gone: "At night I dream without you, and hope I don't wake up; 'Cause waking up without you is like drinking from an empty cup".

2) Rhyme within reason. You know when you see a song written by someone who isn't very good and the lyrics just come off as cheesy? This is often because they rhyme too much or very badly. You should avoid having all of your lines rhyme, and the rhymes that you do use should look natural. Don't put weird phrases or words into your lyrics just to get a rhyme. Really, your lyrics don't have to rhyme at all. Plenty of songs have non-rhyming lyrics.

Good: "You make me feel real again/You just have to smile and I know/The sun's coming out - Amen!"

Bad: "I really love my cat/My cat is where it's at/Her tail looks like a bat/She's getting kind of fat..."

Of course, there are some genre considerations. Rap often has far more rhyming than other genres, but even then it's not required. It's just stylistic.

3) Try non-standard rhyme schemes. If you do want to make your rhyming stand out a bit more and avoid sounding cheesy, you can experiment with different styles of rhyming. Did you know that there's more ways to rhyme than just what you learned in school? Explore assonance/consonance rhymes, pararhyme, alliteration, forced rhymes, etc.

For example, Macklemore's Same Love uses many examples of assonance rhymes and other non-standard rhymes: lately/daily, anointed/poisoned, important/support it, etc.

4) Avoid cliches. You want to avoid cliches because these keep your songs from standing out and don't show off your unique talent. If you have someone down on their knees (especially if they're begging please), someone is walking down the street (either it's a girl or it's you, either way, it's been done), or you just have to ask "why can't you see", you probably need to go back to the drawing board.

- BHABYPANGET