Page 15 - wamcountry

Simon Wright

Re-write the lyrics to a famous song – see if you can create ‘Object Writing’ exercise.
alternative lyrics for Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’, or ‘The
River’ by Bruce Springsteen. Or any other song that you Song-Writers on Song-Writing, by Paul Zollo. I have
fancy. This can be a great fun way to kick-start your lyric the expanded 4th edition of this book and it’s a
writing creativity. And it may also be quite a challenge, dauntingly large book at over 700 pages! You can dip in
but you don’t improve at anything in life by just doing and out of it though, and choose the sections that most
things that are easy! I’ve recently taken on the challenge interest you. And the really cool thing about the book is
of writing alternative lyrics for ‘Yesterday’ by The Beatles, that it’s comprised of interviews with loads of great and
and added another twist by co-writing it with another famous songwriters. There are over 60 of them (!) and
lyricist! some of the ones that I found most interesting include
Leonard Cohen, Frank Zappa, Tom Petty, k.d. Lang, Lou
Writing to existing music Reed, Neil Young, and Mark Knopfler.
A lot of lyricists begin as lyric first writers. By this, I mean
that they write the lyrics without there being any music to On Writing, by Stephen King. Okay, I know it’s not a
accompany the words. Their task then is to find musicians book about lyric writing or songwriting, but this
to collaborate with to get their lyrics turned into songs. masterpiece by horror writer Stephen King is rightly
That approach is often the most rewarding because there regarded as one of the best guides on the craft of writing. I
are no constraints imposed other than some general lyric think writers often dabble across different writing genres,
writing norms around structure. and I believe this is a good think. It supports
creativity and lyric ideas often will flow from a piece of
However, having the flexibility to work on music first prose writing. A couple of pieces of his advice that I think
songs will greatly enhance your ability to develop are pertinent for lyric writers are ‘Stopping a piece of work
profitable working relationships with musicians and just because it’s hard, either emotionally or
bands. It is also a really useful exercise as the requirement imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on
to write to pre-defined music will test your abilities and when you don’t feel like it’, and ‘When you write a story,
make you think more about the realities of song writing. you’re telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your
For example, you’ll quickly realise (if you hadn’t already) main job is taking out all the things that are not the story’.
that having one verse that is 8 lines long and another
that is 3 lines long is just not going to work. It will also About Simon Wright
help you to better understand the importance of prosody,
which is about the patterns and stresses of words. If lines Simon is an Irish lyric writer who lives in Scotland. He
2 and 4 in a verse need to sound the same then this will collaborates with musicians across the world to turn his
influence the word choices that you make when writing lyrics into songs. Check out his website
your lyrics.
www.LyricSlinger.co.uk
There are music collaboration sites like Kompoz.com that
offer the ability for lyricists to work on music-only tracks, and follow him @TheLyricSlinger on Twitter,
and you can also find vocal-less tracks on YouTube. You
may or may not find that this approach to lyric writing is and on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TheLyr-
for you but I’d thoroughly recommend trying it. icSlinger/
Remember as well that it can be a good way to introduce
yourself to talented musicians. If you succeed in providing Related links:
them with nice lyrics for some music they’ve created, they
may be more likely to help put music to a lyric that you’ve LyricSlinger website: www.LyricSlinger.co.uk
written.
Aerosmith’s Joe Perry On Life During The Coronavirus
Reading books about the art of writing Pandemic:
I’ve referenced Pat Pattinson in this article and he’s one of
the lyric writing gurus that I think are worth checking out. https://www.wbur.org/artery/2020/05/05/aero-
Here are three books that you may find useful: smiths-joe-perry-on-life-during-the-coronavirus-pan-
demic
Writing Better Lyrics, by Pat Pattinson. Pattinson was the
name that kept coming up when I was researching lyric Kompoz music collaboration website: www.Kompoz.com
writing resources. This book covers off fundamentals such
as writing from different points of view, the use of
metaphors, and avoiding clichés. The aspect of it though
that I got the most value from was the aforementioned

www.writeawaymag.co.uk 15