I tend to agree with the point of view that each line need not be able to stand completely on its own, but that each line should be contributing to the whole of the song.

I don't write lyrics much anymore, focusing mostly on instrumentals now; but once upon a time, I did mostly lyric writing and let others write the music. And one thing that helped me immensely in learning to write good, meaningful, full-of-emotion lyrics was reading a few books about how to write poetry.

I mean "poetry" here in its literary sense, not just as a bunch of lines that rhyme. Poetry is conveying emotion with words. And poets have it tougher than lyricists, because poets don't have the music to fall back on -- the words must stand on their own. (Gads -- there's that phrase again!)

How many memorable songs are "memorable" because they have a catchy tune? Maybe you remember the line, but only because of the melody. And how many songs (or lines) are really memorable on their own, with or without music?

A couple of the books I read were by a guy named Judson Jerome. I forget the titles, this was years and years ago, but they were books for beginning poets, published by Writers Digest. You might want to see if you can dig up some copies, I learned a lot from them. The guy really analyzes how to select exactly the right word for each word in the poem. Because at least part of the art of poetry is using exactly the right words, in exactly the right combination, and absolutely nothing more.

You could almost say, "Each word must stand on its own." Not in the sense that it makes perfect sense all by itself ... but in the sense that each particular word is there for a REASON, and it fulfills that reason within the context of the other words.

A combination of such words then creates a line. And again, each line needs a REASON for being.

Anyways, just a couple of thoughts....

--- Ed


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