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Lyric Writing - The Art Of Simplicity
Lyric Writing – The art of simplicity
Lyric writers can become obsessed with the desire to
dazzle through the sheer brilliance of our words. We
might admit, whether secretly or openly, that we’d
derive more pleasure from being told we’re a poetic
genius than from securing a hit single! That’s fine but
a pitfall that some lyricists fall into is equating
sophisticated flowery language with lyrical quality.
The best lyrics oftenhave simplicity at their heart.
What’s your best ever lyric?
I saw a post on a music website where site members
were invited to showcase their best ever lyric. It’s
quite a daunting task to pick out just one favoured
snippet of lyrics. There were half a dozen or so lyrics
that came to mind for me but I opted for the first
verse of a lyric that I wrote for a song called
‘Footprints in the snow’.
(Verse 1)
Footprints in the snow
Tracks that soon will vanish
No-one will know
That I was here
That you were here
Or that I felt your breath
As I pulled you near.
(Taken from ‘Footprints in the snow’)
I considered why I chose this lyric from the
hundreds I have written. It helps that Footprints in
the snow was turned into a song by incredibly
talented musician Josh Castagno, and that it won
the Collaboration Contest that we entered, but there
was more to it than that. When I re-read the lines
I realised there are no superfluous words – each is
needed for the story that the opening verse tees up.
And there’s nothing overly flowery in the lyrics, but
they (hopefully) succeed in conveying a deep
emotion that the protagonist is recalling.
It reminded me, too, of advice I once received from
a published author, Allan Guthrie. Allan had very
kindly reviewed a couple of chapters of a novel I had
written, and one piece of advice he imparted was to
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ruthlessly and continuously edit one’s work to cut out
unnecessary literary embellishments. Indeed, he felt
so strongly about this that he’d written an article
entitled ‘Hunting down the Pleonasm’. A pleonasm is
a word that could be removed from a sentence
without affecting its meaning.
It suddenly struck me that the same is probably true
of other writing forms, including lyrics.
Examples of brilliantly ‘simple’ lyrics
Having had the idea that the art of simplicity is
important in creating impactful lyrics, I wanted to
test that hypothesis out. I searched on ‘best ever
lyrics’ and ended up on an article by The
Independent, called ‘The 40 best song lyrics, from
Kendrick Lamar to Nirvana’. Clearly such lists are
extremely subjective but I picked out a few examples
from the featured songs.
‘And you could have it all / My empire of dirt / I will
let you down / I will make you hurt’
(‘Hurt’, by Nine Inch Nails)
There are no words there (or in the whole song) that
my 6 year old son wouldn’t understand, but Trent
Reznor created one of the most powerfully emotional
lyrics of all time. Each word matters, and the
intensity grows with each line.
‘Well you know that I love to live with you / but you
make me forget so very much/ I forget to pray for the
angels/ and then the angels forget to pray for us.’
(So Long Marianne, by Leonard Cohen)
Cohen is rightly regarded as one of the all-time great
lyricists, and spent a lot of time editing and
perfecting the lyrics that he worked on. He was an
extremely intelligent and articulate man and no
doubt could and did use sophisticated language when
creating some of his songs. But in So Long Marianne
the poetic magic is delivered through the careful
arrangement of everyday straightforward words.
‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God/ But I know,
darling, that you do/ But if I did I would kneel down
and ask Him/ Not to intervene when it came to you.’
(Into My arms, by Nick Cave)
www.writeawaymagazine.co.uk