Have you thought about your lyric phrase lengths? The Golden rule- Keep things EVEN. Ninety percent of mainstream commercial pop music is written with four beats to each bar (4/4) time, meaning the music is divisible by 4. This needs to be considered when writing commercial pop lyrics. If you write consistent song sections-verses, chorus, bridges, etc, that are grouped into 4 or 8 lines, you are on the right track. If you write lyrics with sections containing odd phrase lengths, e.g., 3 lines, 5 lines, 7 lines, or phrases with notable uneven syllable lengths, etc, they will not work well rhythmically, and will almost always be overlooked by composers looking for lyrics. Here is a great article on this very subject >>
The Songbay Lyric Writing Competition: How We Chose The Winners The winners of the 2020 Songbay Lyric Writing Competition were announced at the end of last year. The standard was incredibly high and the process of choosing the winners, from a short list of over a hundred and fifty, was a challenge! In this blog post, we reveal some of the thought processess of the judges. We’ll also be sharing the winning and commended entries throughout this article in case you Continue
