Rooksby, Rikky (2000/2009) ‘How to Write a Lyric’ in How To Write Song on Guitar: A guitar-paying and songwriting course, Backbeat Books, pp. 117-136
- 118 “True poetry has much less tolerance of cliché than lyrics.”
- 118 Music can add important information to a lyric [Note: Sondheim’s idea that a lyric must leave room for music to fill in the gaps.]
- 118-9 There is an infinite variety of ‘I love you’ songs. Rooksby gives a long list of great starting points on this.
- 119 “Lyrics thrive on trouble of some kind.”
- 120 Love triangles
- 120 Non-romantic love songs
- 121 A love song might be a disguised ‘sex’ song
- 121 Geography song: “It encompasses such profound questions as: Wehere are you? Where have you been? Where do you want to be?”
- 122 Place names can be evocative [poetically or comically]
- 123 Telephone or letter songs {or Twitter, 140 characters?]
- 123 Car journey song
- 123 Train journey song [or plane]
- 123 Crime and punishment song
- 124 People’s names songs
- 124 City landscapes
- 124 answer or parody another song, or its title
- 125 Time: memory, time of day, month, season, historical event
- 126 Famous people, including fictional characters
- 127 based on a book or film
- 127 put-down song
- 127 songs aboiut media we use e.g. radio, TV, papers, internet [texting? Video calls?]
- 127 Clothing (Blue Suede Shoes, Lady in Red]
- 128 Dance instructions
- 128 Fantasy or gothic
- 128-9 “… the self-referential song-about-writing-a-song has a greater percentage of turkeys than probably any other category. Love-obsessed singer-songwriters who grapple with being tongue-tied in the presence of their beloved are notorious for perpetrating these. Nothing is guaranteed to make you sound more like a self-obsessed egomaniac who ought to get a life than starting a lyric with, “I’m sitting here writing a song. / I’m waiting for chords to come along …”
- 129 Big issues: politics, religion, spirituality, protest
- 130 “I recommend that lyric writers equip themselves with three books: a thesaurus, a book of provebs and famous quotes, and a rhyming dictionary (and no, a rhyming dictionary is not cheating).
- 130 Write from the perspective of 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person, or several points of view (which can include e.g. duets)
- 131 Narrative
- 132 avoid predictable rhymes
- 132 don’t trap yourself into a rhyme that forces an inappropriate word, e.g. an archaism (‘thee’) [or something that tugs the meaning somewhere you don’t really want to go]
- 132 Exercise: Find interesting rhymes and try to write a lyric for them
- 132 declarations, questions, replies, descriptions, actions
- 133 avoid predictable metaphors or similes
- 133 disregard cliché and find something fresh
- 133 weather dominates amateur lyrics
- 133 if you use weather, find a new angle
- 133 nature symbols are over-used and too vague
- 134 Find the poetic or special in the ordinary
- 134 Specific lyrics tend to succeed better than general ones
- 134 “Mini-dictionary of pop clichés” – a great list of what to avoid using
- 134 “Try to avoid filler words – well, baby, just, really. These add nothing to the sense and only occupy space in a line.”
- 134 Subvert clichés e.g. “born with a plastic spoon in his mouth”, what Rooksby calls “redeeming clichés”
- 134-5 “A good opening line is valuable. Not only does it set you, the writer, up for the rest of the lyric, but it grabs the listener’s attention. A first line might:
- supply one evocative fact about one of the characters
- give a memorable image
- say something provocatively unexpected
- say something enigmatic and mysterious
- describe a dramatic event
- pose a question
- signal the start of a story
- make a declaration
- present a problem
- plunge us immediately into something happening
- say something defiant
- say something paradoxical”
- 135 “Titles themselves can be inspiring. Part of my own songwriting technique is to keep a list of possible titles for songs. A group of related titles can give an album of songs a particular identity. Sometimes they fix a mood long enough for you to get to grips with it.”
- 135 “Some titles are memorable because they feature wordplay.” Great examples, such as ‘If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?’, ‘Eight Days a Week’, and ‘Illegal Tender’.
- 135 “You can also take common phrases and twist them.” Examples such as: ‘Don’t get mad, get even’, and ‘Another one bites the dust’.
- 135 “Some titles are intriguing because of what they don’t say.” Examples like: ‘I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone’, ‘There! I’ve Said It Again’, and ‘Wedding Bell Blues’.
- 136 Repeat words or phrases [to make a point, not as padding!]