Songwriting Lyrics

Whether a song is good depends a lot on the lyrics. Songs with a good and catchy story often stick with the listener the longest. It is because of this that someone can start to attach an emotional value to such a song. But how do you write lyrics that really tell a story and remain interesting throughout the song?

Basically, you can roughly divide a lyric into two parts: the verses and the chorus. Of course, we also have the pre-chorus and a bridge, but we’ll leave those out for now.
To give a lyric depth and to keep it interesting, it is necessary to create contrast between the texts of the verses themselves, but also between the verses and the chorus. If you constantly say the same thing in all parts of the song, there is no surprise anymore and it quickly becomes boring. So, make sure that you think carefully about the contrast and how you are going to apply it. This can be done in several ways.
For example, you could see the chorus as ‘effect’ and the verses as ’cause’. Of course, this can also be done the other way around. Let’s say our song is about ending a relationship. In the verses you could explain what you think is going wrong or has gone wrong during your relationship, with the result that in the chorus you say that you are ending this relationship.
But there are even more ways, for example: ‘answer’ and ‘question’.

Once you have devised such a structure, the next step is to create contrast between the verses. You don’t want to continue in the second verse on what has already been said in the first verse. The best thing is if you can sketch a new situation in the second verse or look at the situation from a new point of view.
For example, you can use “past” in the first verse and “present” in the second. If you apply that to our break-up song, you get the story in the first verse about what went wrong in the past. Then you tell in the chorus that you break up and in the second verse you tell how you are feeling after you broke up. In this way the lyrics continue to develop throughout the song and the listener remains fascinated because you keep coming up with new situations.

In addition, this gives the chorus a new emotional charge after each verse. After the first verse, in which everything is still doom and gloom, the message that you are ending the relationship is still quite emotional because of the situation described earlier.

To read more about Songwriting and how to improve the process of developing, creating and refining recorded music visit our knowledge base page about Songwriting Education.