Quote:
Originally Posted by either/or
just start writing prose, not even in song form ya know, like pages and pages of mainly garbage and you will surely find a few good lines in there somewhere.
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I'd say either do what he said, or.
1) Identify something you actually want to write a lyric about.
2) Write down as many titles for a song on this topic as you can.
3) Choose the best title, that can also be the hookline in your chorus.
4) Based on the title that you now have, write line after line of whatever comes into your head... as much as possible. Then look at all of the lines, take the ones that impress you and drop the rest.
5) Put those lines in an order that seems to make sense, with those lines as your verse and bridge and the title as the chorus.
6) Try to play a song based on what you've written. Keep playing until you get to the end. Do this a few times until you can identify which lines worked as lyrics and which didn't.
7) Go away and do something else for a few minutes, then come back to the lyrics and repeat steps 4, 5 and 6 over and over until you have something you like.
This is almost exactly how I write songs. For step 3 I often will come up with a catchy chorus melody first and then think of the best lyric to fit it based on the subject. Unless you have a real talent for lyric-writing then I think that trying to fit lyrics around the melody usually leads to pretty bad lyrics and often a slightly cliched melody. If you start with lyrics first then it tends to push the melody rhythm toward something a bit less boring and obvious. It can also tend to lead you into writing more interesting structures which you wouldn't have thought of if you were writing music-first.
AND FOR SUCCESSFUL SOUNDING SONGS WITH CATCHY CHORUSES, DON'T FORGET TO TRY A TOUCH OF ALLITERATION.