DontRunMeOver

8. Know exactly what the song is about

When compared to most poetry and other creative forms of language, songs are short and sweet. As lyrics must be singable and need to leave space for the music, a song will typically contain no more than a couple of hundred words (I would estimate my songs have about 150 words on average, some maybe reach about 300, but not much more).

This limit benefits the musical side of the song and it means that there is very little room for faffing about when it comes to getting your point across. You have a few hundred words to tell your story, or to convey your emotion, or to paint whatever picture you want the listener to get.

Thus it is vital that you know exactly what you're going to write about before you start writing the lyrics, so that you're well prepare to communicate the message you want within the short time available. If you have a clear idea of what you want to say, then all you need to do is render this idea into the form of a song. Plus, if you have a clear idea of what you're saying, the listener will be more likely to have a clear idea of what is being said to them. If you aren't sure what your song is about, the listener has no chance.


9. Choose a worthwhile subject

Is there a topic you genuinely want to sing about and which you would really, truly want to hear a song about?
No? Then give up songwriting right now.
Yes? Then write a song about that subject.


10. Don't just write lyrics

We write lyrics with the intention of singing them, or maybe getting somebody else to sing them. It can be helpful to try singing, or at least reading aloud, lyrics while writing them. How good a phrase looks on a page often has no relation to how it sounds when read aloud. Many lines which look poetic when written down become clumsy within a song. A lot of lines which look too basic in text can be very well suited to being sung (this is particularly true to words with a lot of vowel sounds). A good guideline here is "if it doesn't trip nicely off the tongue, ditch it". If its difficult to read aloud, its going to be a nightmare to sing. And if its a nightmare to sing, its not a particularly good song (unless you really like Gilbert and Sullivan)...

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