Song Lyrics

Once you have decided what your song will be about, and thought of a title and a hook, you will have to go ahead and write your song.

A great idea alone does not make a great song. From your song's beginning to its end, the music and lyrics should capture the attention of your listeners.

The following tips will help you write the lyrics for a well-written, successful song.

Be Consistent

If you want listeners to stay interested in your song and to become emotionally involved with it, it is important that your song remain consistent in plot and in emotional tone.

The plot of your song should be consistent - it must maintain continuity.

Make sure that the story that is told by your lyrics makes sense and that the listener can follow it.

The listener should have a clear understanding of how and why the story is developing as it is and should not have to ask, "How did he get there?" or "Why is she reacting that way?" A bridge in a song can introduce new information or a new way of looking at things, but the lyrics in the bridge should still make sense in relation to the rest of the song.

Use grammar to help maintain a consistent plot. The rules of grammar do not change for songwriting. As with prose or poetry writing, they are there to help the reader (or in your case, the listener) understand what is going on. When using pronouns - he, she, us, we, they - make sure that the listener can understand exactly who performed a particular action.

Maintain a consistent grammatical tense - write all your lines in the present tense or all your lines in the past tense, so the listener can't become confused about the timeline of events. An exception to this rule could apply to a song that has a bridge, where you can use a change in tense to show a change in perspective. For example, you might write the verses and the chorus in the present tense, but write the bridge in the past tense. In this way, you can to show that in the bridge, you are looking back at things that happened a long time ago.

Be consistent with the song's point of view. If the lyrics in the first verse are written in the first person - from the viewpoint of the person who is experiencing the action, then the whole song - with the exception of the bridge, which can show a different perspective - should be written in the first person. If the first verse is written in the third person - from the viewpoint of an outsider who is telling a story about other people - than the whole song, except for the bridge, should be written in the first person.

It is extremely important that your song maintain one emotional tone. Listeners should be able to empathize with the emotions expressed by the singer, and they will not be able to do that if the emotional tone of the song is constantly changing.

The listener should be sure of what the singer is feeling as soon as the singer sings the first line of the first verse. The singer should express the same emotion throughout the song.

Make sure that the music and the lyrics emphasize the same emotion. If the lyrics in the song show that the protagonist is angry because someone has wronged him and that he wants revenge, they should not be accompanied by music that is happy and upbeat.

Use Natural-Sounding Lyrics

Your lyrics should sound like words that the singer would use naturally. If the protagonist is a working class teenage single mother, the words of your song should be words that would be spoken by a working class teenage single mother in real life.

You can use poetic devices like rhyme and alliteration, and of course, you should make sure that the lyrics fit the structure of the song - for example, the lyrics for all the verses should have roughly the same number of syllables and be written in the same meter - but you should never let the your song's protagonist sing words that would be out of character for her or him.

Use Imagery and Detail

Don't tell your listeners how the singer is feeling - show them.

For example, instead of having the singer say "I'm lonely", have the singer talk about eating breakfast while looking at an empty chair across the table.

Make sure that the images in your song are described in enough detail so that that listeners can sense what is going on. In their minds, they should be able to see, hear, smell, taste and touch the same things that the singer is sensing. What is the singer eating? How does it taste? Smell? Is it warm or cold? You can use images of everyday things to emphasize how the singer is feeling. For example, a cold, soggy, piece of toast can symbolize a relationship that became cold, dull and unappetizing.