Writing Song Lyrics

In a previous post on songwriting, I walked you through my typical process, from chord sequence to melody to finished song. This time we'll take a closer look at the final stage, writing the lyrics, using the example of my just-completed "Luminous Morn." I should point out that my process for this one was quite unusual, as you'll soon see. When it comes to lyrics, the way I write varies widely and I have no standard method. This is how it went down this time.

As usual, I started with a complete chord sequence and hummed melody. As occasionally happens, a plausible first line popped into my head straight away, so I went with it, figuring I could change it later if need be (I didn't). That first line:

Come to the water's edge, come now, my love

Sometimes the music itself will suggest a lyrical tone. This tune was a slow, minor-key progression that was clearly in the vein of traditional British folk. So I knew from the off that I wouldn't be writing lyrics like "me and my bros chillin', yo." This song wanted formal, almost archaic language—something a 15th-century troubadour would use to beckon his love hither while strumming his lute.

Earlier today I was reading Psalm 98, a great place to hunt for archaic if that's what you're after, and came across this:

Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre,
with the lyre and the sound of melody.
With trumpets and the sound of the horn
make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord.

I liked "lyre" and "horn" both, so I plopped them into my first verse like so: 

Come to the water's edge, come now, my love
Come let me sing you the song I dream of
Strum of the lyre and breath of the horn

Great! But I needed one more line, and it had to rhyme with "horn." I thought of "morn," which seemed to fit, and that mutated into "[Something] the [something] miraculous morn." Pretty nice, sang well, needed the blanks filled in, but still, "miraculous morn" wasn't quite what I meant. So, I went to thesaurus.com, typed in "miraculous" and checked the alternatives. "Numinous" came up, a word for which I liked the sound and meaning ... once I looked it up. And that right there posed a problem. I have a songwriting rule that says you shouldn't use any word in a song you'd never ordinarily speak, and that goes double if you have to look it up. So "numinous," lyrical though it may be, was out. The next step was immediately obvious: what rhymes with "numinous"? Well, luminous, right? Sings well, sounds good, sounds a bit archaic, makes sense and passes the familiarity test. So, the first verse became:

Come to the water's edge, come now, my love
Come let me sing you the song I dream of
Strum of the lyre and breath of the horn
Herald the dawn of this luminous morn

I sing as I write, because as mentioned in my earlier post if a line doesn't sing well, I don't care if it's better than Will Shakespeare; it's gone. And "herald" didn't sing well. I began searching for related words and came up with "summon." This required a change in the preposition, but that's fine. The changed line:

Summon the dawn on this luminous morn

Good, but still needed work—that second line wasn't up to snuff. I tinkered and tinkered till I found something I liked better. The final first verse:

Come to the water's edge, come now, my love
Come hear the serenade sung from above
Strum of the lyre and breath of the horn
Summon the dawn on this luminous morn

Because this tune has a fairly simple structure—three verses, two choruses—it occurred to me that "Luminous Morn" was at the very least a strong contender for song title. What I'll usually do at this point is google my would-be title to see if anyone else has used it. Google returned 1,290 results, which I took as a good sign. I was, however, drawn to an entry labelled Current Literature, Volume 5 from Google Books, so I clicked on that. Evidently the phrase appeared there. It turns out that Current Literature, Volume 5 is from August 1890, and as far as I can tell was some kind of Reader's Digest for Victorians. My title was found in a section entitled "Choice Verse from Books and Magazines." It's in a poem called "The Song of the Sea" by one Harriet Whitney which originally appeared in Belford's, whatever that was. Here's Harriet's line:

Their world was a world of enchantment;
And they laughed with the laughter of scorn,
When I turned me away from its beauty
In the light of the luminous morn.

Now, here's where it gets interesting. Quite by accident I'd stumbled on a sample of Victorian poetry. No idea if these folks were esteemed poets of their day or amateurs writing for local newspapers. I suspect the latter (no offence intended, dear Harriet). Anyway, I moved on to my next task: hunting for additional material to, well, steal. Not all from Harriet's poem; I also picked through the choice verse in the surrounding vicinity. Here are the phrases I wrote down:

take cheer
song of the sea
sun-beaten land
vine-tangled valley
steal away
tranquil, I brood
mend broken strands
grassy slope
dwell in the stillness

Meanwhile, a few pages back, I found a reference to a Mrs. E.J. Nicholson (I rarely see my surname in print, so it caught my eye) who wrote under the pen name of Pearl Rivers. That struck me as mighty evocative, something I could use for sure. Swipe!

To give you a flavour of this publication, here's an excerpt from that section: "She was born on Pearl River, Mississippi, and thus she constantly associates the scenes of her childhood with all her literary productions." Yes, "born on." How quaint. Also noted were the frequent use of "to-day," "to-morrow," "good-by" and so on. (This is what "me and my bros chillin', yo" will sound like in 125 years, friends.)

During my dinner break I was listening to a podcast called "The Soul-Directed Life," and kept my ears primed for words I could pilfer from there. Here's what came up:

nourish
garden
beloved
leading me on
sustain
sacrament

I wrote these down on a separate sheet, then set both lists aside to start work on the chorus. For that, I had an elongated "ooh-ooh" in the earlier demo I'd recorded, and I liked the sound of it so much that I decided whatever word went over that bit, it had to rhyme with "ooh." I started with soo-oon, we can go but didn't like the rhyme scheme it suggested or the meaning, so I chewed on it a little more. The line morphed into soon, we are near. Wrong tense. Soon, we'll be near—better tense-wise but kind of blah. I finally settled on soon, we'll draw near. "Draw near" struck me as a more Victorian turn of phrase, so I went with that.

I finished the rest of the song using the lists, my rhyming dictionary, and yes, several words I came up with all on my own. Compare the finished version to the lists above and you'll see how the element of chance enters the songwriting process and how, in the end, my stealing isn't stealing at all. "Luminous Morn" reads nothing like Harriet Whitney's poem, Psalm 98 or The Soul-Directed Life, but I thank them all for their help.

Luminous Morn (Vern Nicholson, © 2016 SOCAN)

Come to the water’s edge, come now, my love

Come hear the serenade sung from above

Strum of the lyre and breath of the horn

Summon the dawn on this luminous morn

Sun-beaten gardens will show what’s in store

Rivers of pearl lead us on through the door

Steal into gladness, bid farewell forlorn

High on the stillness of luminous morn

Broken hearts mended in times of good cheer

Soon, we’ll draw near

Love is the sacrament by which we’re born

Here on the cusp of our luminous morn

Come to the water’s edge, come now, my love

Come hear the serenade sung from above

Strum of the lyre and breath of the horn

Oh, summon the dawn on this luminous morn

Hasten the dawn of this luminous morn

Songwriting from the Ground Up

I'm working on three new songs at the moment. I've just finished one called "Shadow Play Clan," and I thought I'd give you a tour of the process. What I'm about to describe is fairly typical for me, with the caveat that not every song I write happens in this way, and certainly not every songwriter composes music the way I generally do.

In my experience, listeners often assume that a musician sits down and says, "I think I'll write a song today," decides what to write about and methodically proceeds in writing said song. Now, I've heard of people who really do work like this, as if it's a job for which they set aside blocks of time and literally punch in and out. My process isn't quite like that.

For me, the germ of a song comes at an unexpected time; I may not even have access to an instrument when the first flush of inspiration strikes. In this case, I did. I was warming up to rehearse for a show when I found myself playing this chord sequence and thought, "Hmm, that's nice. I should develop that." But first things first—I need to get it down before I forget it, so I'll whip out my mp3 recorder and do just that. If the chords are unusual, plenteous or non-standard, I may speak the fingerings onto the tape before I play, write them down, or both. ("Tape" = Vern showing his age.)

Sometimes multiple sections of the song arrive at once as I play through the changes and try to figure out what might come next. Other times I'll get only the one part and will later string it together with previously recorded (compatible) bits. If I have no such things, that's when I might actually reserve a chunk of time to write the next part(s). With "Shadow Play Clan," I think two parts came at once and I had to figure out the rest later, then stitch everything together. Anyway, eventually I'll end up with a skeleton of a song, an extended chord sequence that makes sense to me as a possible intro, outro, verse, chorus and bridge.

A quick digression: I usually write on guitar, but have (so far) also composed music on bass, piano, dulcimer and on occasion just voice. (Sometimes a strong melody comes first, in which case I'll sing it into my recorder and figure out keys and chords later. "Linden Tree near the Water," the title track of my forthcoming album, started with me warbling a melodic snippet in a parking lot on a windy day with trucks roaring by. And I have the work "tape" to prove it!) As a musician, I'm fascinated by the way one's choice of instrument in a very real sense determines the song's form and composition. I've heard colleagues say that if you're stuck in a songwriting rut, try composing on a different instrument, maybe even one with which you have limited facility.

Back to our embryonic song, I've now got my skeleton, which in this case is a sequence of guitar chords. What's next? Some composers will immediately write the words, if they've not done so already. In fact, those whom I'd call lyrics-first people usually start with the words, then hang the chords and the melody around them. I'm a lyrics-last kind of guy. Generally I need the melody before I can write any lyrics. So, armed with my skeletal chord sequence, I pick up my instrument of choice, run through the tune and start humming: la-la-la, doo-doo-doo, ooh-ooh-ooh, bah-bah-bah, whatever. If the odd word wants to assert itself, I'll sing it, too. Some aspect of the melody, even a fragment, may work especially well and if so, I make sure I record it before it vanishes. This may include variations on the melodic theme that'll happen in strategic places: for example, singing in a higher register on the last chorus. I often work on isolated bits of the song, stitching the melody together much like I did the chords. Taking the same excerpt used above, I ended up with this melody line.

Once I've got the whole song, top to bottom, with chords and melody, it's finally time for the words. I may have a few lines I've scribbled down somewhere that I can start with, but it depends. Often the cadence and accents of the melody itself suggest certain sounds, rhymes, maybe even specific words. At this point, if I've not done so already I'll give the song a working title—in this case it was "3-Minute Pop."

Another short digression: sometimes I'm asked, "How do you decide what to write about?" Well, it chooses me. I don't "decide" anything other than whether to follow the muse or not. Something I've read or heard or seen or experienced or felt will light a fire under me and I'm artistically constipated, as it were. I need to get it out. Again, some songwriters may sit down and decide, "Today, I'm going to write a song about butterflies" or whatever, but I don't operate that way. For better or for worse, my particular process results in a lot of first-person writing. I'm reminded of John Lennon's quote: "I write about me because I know me." In fact The Beatles, those master tunesmiths, are a case study in contrasts, Lennon's predominantly "I" viewpoint counterbalanced by McCartney's "he/she/you." Think of the difference between, say, "Help!" and "Eleanor Rigby," "I'm So Tired" and "Hey Jude." Of course, both could (and did) swap roles when it suited them, like John's "Dr. Robert" and Paul's "I've Just Seen a Face." That's why they're masters, folks.

Anyway, for this particular song I thought I'd try something new. Second- or third-person lyrics still seem a bit distant to me, both in terms of their emotional gravitas and my ability to pull them off, but I thought I'd try an experiment while sticking with first-person. So, "Shadow Play Clan" is written first-person from the viewpoint of someone who isn't me. She's someone quite dear to me, someone I want to understand better, someone with whom I aim to empathize but have at times had difficulty doing so. Once that light bulb clicked on, bingo: fire lit, motivation in place to write words. Here's the result, over the same bit as before, taken from the demo recording of the song.

You'll note that the with-words version doesn't exactly match the cadence of the raw melody. It's close, but there's some variation. Adding words and making them rhyme will do that, and that's fine, but here's where you can really tell the difference between lyrics-first and lyrics-last writers. To a fault, a lyrics-first writer shapes the melody around the words, even if the result is hard to sing and it seems like there are 37 extra syllables in a particular couplet. Example: Bruce Cockburn's "Silver Wheels." Now, don't get me wrong: I love this song and part of me wishes I could write like this, but I just can't wrap my tongue around that many syllables. Besides, I lack the literary chops. (Check out especially the "radio speakers gargle Top 40 trash" verse at 3:06. He almost makes it rhyme, too!) In contrast, I will delete otherwise lovely words that weigh down the melody with too many syllables, hard consonants, awkward rhymes or anything that doesn't sing well. And on occasion, I'll insert a word that may not make literal sense or express precisely what I want but sounds so bloody good.

While we're on the topic, a word about rhymes and songwriting crimes. (Just checking to see if you're still with me. Okay, good.) I've not yet learned how to write without them, though I'm pretty sure my rhyming schemes vary from song to song, more through blind luck than a deep awareness of what I'm doing. The trick is to avoid rhymes that are dead obvious, bordering on cliché (think moon/spoon, love/dove or fire/desire; my own pet peeve is change/rearrange) while at the same time resisting the temptation to go all clever-clever, pseudo-literary (like, say, bluesy/Jacuzzi or lamb/cardiogram). When you're stuck, a rhyming dictionary can be helpful if used sparingly. My personal rule: if the rhyme jumps out and says, "Aha! The only way you'd ever have found me is by using a rhyming dictionary," don't use it. In the chorus for this song I originally had "shadow play man," which I was reluctant to ditch because it sung very well. Ah, the perils of being a lyrics-last guy. I went through alternates off the top of my head, all of them nice, one-syllable non sequiturs—"ran," "pan," "fan," "tan"—before consulting the dictionary, where I found "clan." Jackpot. It's not quite as lyrical as "man" but I could make it work, and the meaning was much closer to what I'd originally intended, so I stuck it in and there you are.

And the title? For us lyrics-last folk the title comes even more last, if that's remotely grammatical. That said, I have done the reverse: my song "That '70s Lifetime" started life as just that title, everything else proceeding from there. Now, hit-maker gurus will tell you that your title must be in the chorus, must be short, must be catchy and must be repeated 736 times before fadeout. As you might expect I don't subscribe to that theory, though neither am I fundamentally opposed. If things fall that way, all well and good, but I like to pick an evocative phrase in the song that also (ideally) encapsulates the overarching thrust of the tune. Sometimes that's in the verse or even the bridge. As it turns out, this time my title is lifted from the chorus. As for its catchiness, "Shadow Play Clan" is, I admit, more Robert Pollard obscure than Garth Brooks straightforward; fine by me. Actually, one of my favourite titlers is the legendary Arthur Lee, whose song titles usually appeared nowhere in his lyrics and could well cast the entire song in an ironic light, such as "The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This." Take a listen, and you tell me he should have called it "Pigtails in the Morning" instead.

So, there you have the anatomy of a song from the ground up. The next step, of course, involves turning the demo into a finished recording. Having just written it I'm not at the production and arrangement stage with this one yet, but when the time comes I'll be asking questions like: stripped-down or full-band treatment? If it's the latter, what will the rhythm section (bass and drums) do? Additional percussion, tambourine maybe? Do I want any keyboards? How about backing vocals or a second guitar? Other instrumental colour? How's the tempo of the original recording? Do I want to make any last-minute changes to the lyrics or phrasing? All these and more considerations come into play, but that's another post for another time.