Lyrics are designed to work with songs, therefore your lyric needs to have a song structure. Are you completely familar with song structures? For commercial, pop, country, rock, soul, hip hop songs, you need to have clearly defined sections. This is the most common song structure: Verse 1 Chorus Verse 2 Chorus Bridge Chorus So when writing lyrics, you should indicate the song structure sections on your lyric. This way the composer knows how your lyric is intended to work. Continue
Songwriting thought of the Day
Uneven Lyric Length
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 >>
