How to write lyrics 🦋

How to write lyrics, if you've never done it before (and even if you have : ))

How to write lyrics

One of the questions that came up in our creativity intensive this week was ‘how do you write if you’re not a writer? What if you don’t know what you want to say?’

For a start, you don’t need to be a writer (yet). You become a writer by writing.

Nor do you need to know what you want to say. You’ll find out what you have to say, once you start ‘talking’.

Unless I’ve got a broken heart or an amusing concept I want to explore, I usually don’t have a clue what I want to say. Even with a broken heart I don’t know exactly what I want to say - I just know that I need to write. Not always my best songs but it gets it up and out. This was how I ended up writing my first song.

Subject? Unrequited love.

Boy? Tim James.

I was 12 years old.

Of course, it was lyrical shit but it was honest.

Honest does not necessarily mean ‘good’ but it’s a starting point. 😳

And starting is the point. 💪

Write shit.

Any shit.

Until you get good.✨✨✨

You can’t get good unless you can let yourself be shit. 🤦🏻‍♀️

When I was 16, my lyrical repertoire extended to drug addiction as well as boys. Again, present day reality as a check-in point. So what that my relatability quotient was love sick emo-teenagers and junkies? Relating was not the point.

The point was doing it.

I’ve been a songwriter for over 30 years now.

My writing methods have evolved but here are a few modes of attack for anyone collecting lyrical ideas.

1. Start with a line you find amusing, like ‘I’m cleaning out my inbox, I’m wearing matching clean socks’

   Anytime someone says something interesting or I think of a funny concept or line, I jot it into the notes section of my phone. Rainy day ideas. They have a way of finding their way out of the box into the conscious world somehow, if they are solid enough.

2. Start with song titles. No lyrics, no chords, no melodies.

   This is what I did for my first solo album. I used far-fetched scenarios as starting points for songs: An Asylum on New Year’s Eve, Pinot Noir and Poetry for Breakfast, Even Quadriplegics Get the Blues.

   I sang each title over random notes and chords until a song emerged.

3. Write over instrumental music that has nothing to do with you.

   For example, one time I was in a very empty bar. A solo muso was playing weird guitar-electro music to two people and a dog. I had an itchy head ( I hate washing my hair - takes too long) so I started scratching.

   ‘What’s wrong? my friend asked.

‘J’ai des petits bêtes dans ma tete! (I have little beasts in my brain)’

The line sounded good. I typed it into my notes, kept typing along to the rhythm of whatever the musician was playing and Voila! L’exterminateur, was born.

BUT WHAT IF I HAVE NO LYRICAL IDEAS? 😭🤬

While these are my methods of late, my go-to instinctive method for writing lyrics has always been music first - a chord progression or a guitar or piano hook- then melody, then the lyrics.

When I was younger, half the time I didn’t have anything I wanted to write about, I’d just stumble across a melody and then write lyrics. I didn’t think about whether they were good or not. I was young so my standards were not terribly high. Unfortunately, my “Just do it” ethos was short-lived.

I’ve been pro since I was 19. Which means there has always been pressure around songwriting which means that writing sessions generally involve locking myself in a room with an instrument, either alone or with other humans, and waiting, knowing that the muse always shows up eventually, if you make space for her.

While prison is a common method for me, I don’t always hold myself at gunpoint to write.

Sometimes, my guitarist Arty would start playing something while I’d be cooking dinner. I’d hear some chord sequence, feel inspired and sing over the top, subconsciously searching for ‘sonic leylines’, aka a good melody or a ‘Top Line’ in singer-songwriter-publisher speak.

Once we’d found some ‘genius’ idea 🥳 (we thought all our ideas were ‘genius’) we’d frantically look for a way to record it.

We didn’t know how to notate so we needed to move fast so as not to lose the idea.

In the olden days (as in last century) we would call our landline’s answer phone, sometimes from the same phone line we were registering the voice message on, and record the melody/lick/idea. Other times, we’d have a dictaphone on hand. Later on, that was replaced by the minidisk player and these days recording ideas is easy - most smart phones have a voice memo section.

Preliminary recordings last anything between 30 seconds to 9 minutes. Guitar parts, hooks, melody-hunting warbles, a word-mash of whatever the brain feels like regurgitating. Usually cliché crap but, sometimes, a jewel or two emerges.

Even amidst the crap, often the sentiment of the song starts to take shape.

Not that you’d necessarily notice at the time. You’re just fumbling.

The French call this explorative impromptu-singing ‘yaourt’ (yogurt).

(Don’t ask me why. I’m only fake French).

After, we’d listen back to the recordings and start to sift. Gold-digging. A word, an concept, a line, something shiny, poetic, funny.

If the voice message was long, I’d use the recording as a backing track to write (I still do). Sometimes I’d write 15, 20 alternative verses, developing, sifting, culling, curating.

With this method the lyrics are often informed by the mood of the music mixed with the subconscious expression of whatever is going on in my/the world.

Prisons, annoying patterns, broken hearts, God, integrity, truth and silly songs, that’s what we wrote about. Humour stops you getting too serious about it all, plus it’s the fastest way to get over writer’s block (or win an audience over).

Whenever I need to start writing again, I always let myself write a really silly song. Takes the pressure off. Here’s a youtube about it.

I figure, if the Beatles released Octopus’s Garden, Yellow Submarine and Maxwell Silver Hammer I figure it’s fine to write a Sadie Mercedes : )

Sometimes, when I have a melody but no idea what to write, I flip open a random book and sing whatever is there. Even a word or phrase can trigger a whole song’s worth of lyrics.

Once I have some structure, if I am stuck for a word or two, I refer to my rhyming dictionary. Mine has scruffy book marks for fast access to all the common sounds like ‘…one’ (as on phone) ‘are’ (as in bare).

I relied upon the physical book up (see pic) until about 2014. Then I found an app called Rhymers Block.

Rhyming dictionaries are to lyrics like butter is to bread- they take them from good to marvellous. In addition to providing alternative words and rhymes, dictionaries sometimes provided a line.

For example, I have a song called Obstacles.

One of the lines references childhood freneticism verses the exhaustion one feels when carrying emotional baggage

‘Freckle-faced haste, running ahead while you’re running on empty’

That line? Direct rhyming dictionary input.

I guess I was looking up an ‘ace’ word and literally, in alphabetic order, there it was: freckle-faced haste. It’s a great line.

One could say, ‘Thats not original. That’s not yours!’

But I’m going with David Bowie:

“I’m not original. I’m just a tasteful thief”

Is it the thief who recognises that an alphabetical word list contains poetry.

That rubbish can be made into sculptures.

That an abandoned street sign when photographed at the right angle, with the right light, is art.

This is creative alchemy.

Steal like an artist.

There’s a book about it.

But you don’t need to read it.

You just need to do it.

These days, the rhyming dictionary has taken it up a notch, in the form of AI.

In theory, I no longer need my scruffy book.

In terms of rhymes I haven’t used AI much.

Not that I wouldn’t, I’m just working on other projects right now, not songs.

But I have used it and it is wonderful.

“ This is my verse. Can you replace blah in the second line but make it rhyme with blah in the fourth?”

AI ‘reasons’ and then gives you a bunch or permutations, just like a switched-on secretary would or a colleague when you ask, what’s another word for ‘"Blah”.

Yes, you can use AI to write whole songs.

On an app called Suno

I tried it once.

Got a song in 30 seconds

Great vocal. Great Melody.

Boring as shit lyrics.

0 satisfaction, 0 personality, 0 human experience but hey, whatever floats your weird AI boat.

When I mentioned the AI assistance re lyrics to my creative alchemist in training he said, '“Oh no! 😱 I would never do that. I want to feel like I am making it.”

Fair enough.

There is merit to the hustle, I suppose.

But I dont feel a deeper sense of satisfaction when I knead dough as opposed to using my wanna-be Kicthen Aid kneader. And I don’t think I’d feel more satisfied if I had to hand wash all my clothes. I like my machines - and if I could have a sous chef to cut up all my x,y,z I would definitely get one.

So, merit to ferreting through a dictionary as opposed to asking your AI secretary?

I don’t know. Maybe I am too blase.

I have written 100s of songs so I also know more or less what it entails.

Writing lyrics whether you use a physical rhyming dictionary, an app or AI, ultimately it comes down to your choices. This is what shapes your writing, your (he)art.

Having said that, I don’t have a kindle.

I like books. Messy, scruffy tangible paper books

My bedside table is not some dainty thing with two drawers - it’s a massive messy coffee table with cups and vitamins and pens and books.

And my office desk is about 3 metres long littered with at least 12 notebooks containing all my present day ‘genius’ ideas : )

I plan on sifting through them to find the gems.

But one rarely does.

Maybe it can be my artist date this week?

This is why this post exists. I started writing this in my handwritten morning pages journal and thought, fuck it. Fuck it Julia Cameron (the lady who invented ‘Morning Pages’ and says they have to be by hand 🤬)

I’m moving with the times. Had I done it by hand first…well, it would still be in one of the 12 books scattered across my desk,

Whatever gets you over the line, creatively speaking, is all that matters.