Looking for songwriting tips... especially how to avoid the clichés.

Cafe Society
1

I’ve been writing melodies ever since I picked up the guitar. They come really easily to me. Adding lyrics to 'em, however, is exactly where it goes south. I can’t seem to get the rhyming down without them seeming clichéd, or worse, predictible. (Not moon/June or love/above kind of thing… but close enough).

The rest of the song just seems to lack the “oomph” to make it interesting. I’ve been trying the “mound of crap” approach where I just write and write and write and write uncensored, copious amounts and then pieceing it together like a collage. But, the self-critic still kicks in on the final product as being recycled. (And I’ll probably be too shy to give any examples).

So how do you do it? Any tips, tricks, dos/don’ts?

2

One approach I’ve used a lot is to ask myself exactly what I want to say with a song and then boil that statement down to one short phrase or line or even one word. That’s the starting point. I’ll use that as the chorus or the tag to the chorus and work backwards from that.

For instance, let’s say I want to write a love song for my wife (I don’t actually write love songs but this will work as an illustration). I might decide that what I want to say is rather simple: I love my wife.

Ok, so that’s my tag for a chorus. Now I’ll work backwards with rhymes and near-rhymes to find a preceding line or set-up line for the tag. The first word that pops into my head that rhymes with “wife” is 'life." “Life” makes me think of “my life,” So now I’m part of the way to a chorus.

something Something all my life
Something else I love my wife.

It doesn’t take that much work to fill in the “somethings,” and I’ve got a chorus.

That’s a simplistic example, but figuring out what you really want to say in as a pithy a way as possible gives you a lyrical center for a song.

I sometimes will also use the same process just by centering on a particular phrase or set of words or even a single word that I find evocative or powerful in some way.

A purely practical method for finding rhymes is just to mentally run the desired rhme through the alphabet. If I need a rhyme for,say, “tough,” I’ll start running every possible beginning consonant through my mind (“Ok, I need a rhyme for ‘tough’…let’s go…buff cuff cruff duff fuff fluff guff gruff huff…” etc.). I’m not mentally searching for specific words so much as running through a phonetic algorithm and mentally noting which sounds happen to be words. If I can’t find a good rhyme, I’ll go back to the beginning and look for sounds that are close to rhymes. I can almost always find something.

One thing I’ve learned is that you have to keep it simple. Every line should be easy to verbalize out loud and easy to understand. You can’t write poetry and expect it to work. Lyric writing is a wholly different art form. That doesn’t mean you have to be thematically simple or dumb it down, it just means you have to learn to be pithy and evocative rather than complex. You have to be a little impressionistic, even abstract. Pack as much meaning into as few words as possible. It’s ok if people don’t get everything. Music is supposed to be abstract.

Oh, and practice reading the lyrics out loud. Sometimes stuff that looks good on the page can sound stilted or dense when said out loud. Don’t trip yourself up with too many syllables. I think that writing song lyrics is all about condensing your thoughts and concentrating them into as few words as possible. The fewer the words, the more punch they’ll have and the more memorable they will be.

When I was trying to be a rockstar, I always found it gratifying to see fans of our band singing my lyrics along with me at our shows, but it was never what I thought were my lyrically complex songs they did that with. It was the simple, anthemy, shout-along stuff.

3

Get a rhyming dictionary. There are a ton out there.

Read Jimmy Webb’s Tunesmith - he’s one of the greatest songwriters out there, and he’s an amazing writer and thinker when it comes to the subject of songwriting. The book completely changed the way that I approach songwriting and thinking about getting ideas out. I can’t recommend it enough.

4

The rhyming dictionary is a good idea, VCO3. There are a bunch of free, on-line rhyming dictionaries; a quick Google search turned up this one (among others), which at a cursory glance seems to work pretty well.

I’m no songwriter (anymore), but I do have one tip: If you find yourself writing a cliche, consider not chucking the whole thing. Instead, maybe try to find a word or two that you can change to make it something new. Sometimes you can achieve a great effect by letting the listener think you’re going to use a cliche, then giving the phrase a twist ending that surprises us and lets us see something in a new light.

And, having said that, I can’t think of one single example. Uh, just trust me, I guess.

5

I second the Jimmy Webb book. Probably the single best book on the entire process of songwriting (written by an actual professional) I’ve ever read. Had my students read it for class last year when I taught a course in songwriting at the university.

Tips for Writing:

  1. Learn basic form & structure - ABAB, AAB, ABABCABB, etc.

  2. Write a lot of songs. By this I mean finish a lot of songs. Doesn’t matter if they’re good or not. They’ll get better.

  3. Write a section. Is it a verse or a chorus? Then write the other. Once you’ve got both, structure the song. Add a bridge (instrumental for now) Other verses come later. Once you’ve got a workable structure, let it set for a day or so, and finish something else. Then come back to it with an ear tuned to the meaning and the story. Let it write itself, the meter and scansion will come. Next, look at your bridge - does it work? Do you need a lyrical bridge? What’s the alternate perspective the bridge is providing (musical or lyrical?) Last, examine your intros, your outro, your arrangement and voice leading, hits & breaks, etc etc. Record a rough version. Let it sit. come back to it a week or two later. Record it again. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

  4. Know when to tweak. Know when to stop tweaking.
    Hope this helps.

6

“Cliches are your friend. You’ve got to know them; you’ve got to know how to use them.” :wink:

7

I don’t have anything to contribute except a recommendation for the song Just Another Cliché from here. It expresses some of the frustrations you might be feeling.

8

All you need is love. Yeah yeah yeah, Baby.

9

Don’t worry about rhyming. Phrases can fit together without it.

I’d much rather hear an interesting phrase with content over a cheeseball rhyme.

10

I find adding lyrics to a melody to be very difficult. For me, there’s two ways to go - either I have a complete set of lyrics ready to go (generally from somebody else) or else there’s a “core lyric” - just a line or two that comes into my mind with lyrics and music together, and then the rest of the song is built outwards from there.

Admittedly this means that second and subsequent verses (assuming you’re doing that sort of song) have to go music-then-lyrics, but somehow I find that easier if I’ve already got one verse that I’m really happy with (and of course for a chorus or a bridge there’s no downside)
Just before sleep is a great time for free-association. Keep a notebook by your bed.
Oh, and … see DtC’s post? Yeah. What he said.

11

The one thing that usually says “neat lyrics” to me is internal rhymes. And also having rhymes fall so that the sentence carries over to the next line, and/or starts in the middle of a line. It’s just so much more interesting that way.

Gilbert and Sullivan did this a lot – I know you may think that’s hardly applicable to writing a rock song, but believe me it can work.

I also like rhymes made up of more than one word - they’re less likely to be hackneyed. So don’t use two words with the same number of syllables, that rhyme, use a pair of short words that together rhyme with a longer word.

E.g. completely off the top of my head, these lines:

blah blah blah blah blah onward is
dum dum da da. These melodies
blah blah blah blah…

with a sentence splitting over a rhyme and a two-word rhyme, have a more interesting feel than:

blah blah blah blah blah blah heard
da dumj dum da da dum dum word…

12

For interesting rhyme and rhythm ideas, listen to some Eminem. Seriously.

Edit to add a link with more info:

13

I have never understood how great “simple” songwriters like Bacharach/David, Goffin/King, etc. can make simple songs with simple rhymes without sounding corny, if that makes sense.

14

I think it’s good advice not to force rhymes on every line, as well- and to tell a real story. One of my favorite songs is The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel (lyrics, I think, by Paul Simon), which moves pretty fluidly between non-rhyming lines, internal rhymes, and rhyming couplets. It’s simple and gorgeous at the same time, and the rhyming feels natural.

15

Try to avoid “I know it’s crazy, but it’s true.” :smiley:

My husband hates near-rhymes with a burning passion (see Lenny Kravitz for one of the worst offenders for this).

How do people feel about correct grammar in songs? Bad grammar drives me nuts in songs, but I can see its place if you’re trying to give a song a down-to-earth feel. On the other hand, The Clash wrote grammatically-correct songs, and if punk bands can do it…

16

Also, and this may just be a personal pet peeve of mine, but please please don’t put in “filler” words like “just” or “right” or “only” in order to get a line to scan! If it doesn’t scan, then rewrite it, or sing it differently so that it does. When I hear stuff like “Come over here, and sit right down”, or, a doubly bad example ever: “Please let me show you where we could only just be, for us”. Gah!

17

Thanks a lot. Now this is what I’ve got running through my head:

. . . cause there aint no one for to give you no pain . . .

18

I agree. I prefer internal rhyme and slant/near rhyme to hard, masculine rhyme. Usually, you can get away with some pretty sing song rhymes when set to music that you can’t get away with in poetry without sounding cheesy or hackneyed, but, in general, I do prefer softer “rhymes” sprinkled in with the usual masculine rhymes. The band Wire has always been a favorite of mine for this, and they also use enjambment a lot in their songs, for interesting effect. An 8-bar section of music may end, while a thought continues, mid-sentence, from one quatrain to another.

19

I have been loathe to add to this, because I may come in conflict with the intent of the OP.

I have been exposed to quite a few songwriters, and as I have stated way too many times, my friend/drummer in my band is a record producer by day who has gold and platinum albums on the wall of his studio.

His advice on songwriting? Embrace cliche’s, but make them your own. Lemme 'splain - his goal is to write a hit single. So if you, stpauler, are not targeting commercially-accessible-type songs, this may not apply. But he tries to take cliche’s - or cliche concepts, like “my heart is broken” - and bring them to life by fleshing out either the story (if the song tells a story) or the feeling (if the song is focused on relating a feeling in a conceptual, not incident-specific way).

My advice? First of all, listen to **picker **- great advice there. Also, I strongly recommend that you take song lyrics that you consider great examples - I would point to **Tears of a Clown ** or **Tracks of My Tears ** by Smokey Robinson (“America’s greatest poet,” according to Bob Dylan) and re-write them. Copy their concept and try to write a different song with a similar cadence.

If you draw, copy a master to learn - if you write songs, try doing the same. But no matter what, keep writing and writing and writing…

20

DISCLAIMER: I’m not anything like a successful songwriter, and the vast majority of my interest in and experience with writing and performing lyrics involves theatre music. But I think the principles behind lyric writing are pretty constant, so I’ll throw my two cents in anyway.

I agree with a lot of the opinions in this thread in theory; internal rhyme, slant rhyme, and rhymes that use the middle of a word or more than one word are great tools for tightening and improving lyrics. But I also think that avoiding cliches is partly a function of overall approach to writing, rather than a purely technical matter.

Here’s why: I don’t think that cliches are problematic in and of themselves. I think they are problematic because of what they suggest about the song and the ideas behind it. A song filled with cliches isn’t saying anything, and that’s a problem that no amount of tinkering with clever rhymes can fix.

Below are my favorite lyric in the whole world, and my least favorite. Both of them are from songs on essentially the same topic: the singer is in love with someone who is not a suitable mate.

If I could fly,
I’d fly away from you.
Away from it all.
But I am trapped and fighting to break free -
What have you done to me?
I wish I had wings…
No, that’s not true.
If I had wings,
How could I help flying straight to you?

And the other:

Finishing the hat.
How you have to finish the hat.
How you watch the rest of the world from a window
While you finish the hat.
Mapping out a sky…
What you feel like, planning a sky;
What you feel when voices that come through a window go,
Until they distance and die,
Until there’s nothing but sky.
And how you’re always turning back too late
From the grass or the stick or the dog or the light;
How the kind of woman willing to wait’s
Not the kind that you want to find waiting
To return you to the night - dizzy from the height -
Coming from the hat…

So these two passages actually have quite a lot in common. Both use rhyme schemes that aren’t strict ABAB. Both use very simple rhyme pairs, and mostly masculine rhymes (free/me, true/you in the first; sky/die, late/wait in the second).

But the first is filled with cliches. And this is a problem, because the song actually says nothing at all. Who is the singer? What is the problem with the singer’s love interest? From what is the singer trying to “break free?” Almost anyone could sing those words in any situation, and the words would be exactly as appropriate. If you don’t know the stage work that first lyric is from, you wouldn’t be able to guess the context of the song in a million years.

The second lyric is not like that at all. Without me telling you anything about the context, you can probably understand any number of things about the singer, the object of his desire, and the nature of their problem. It is specific; it is saying something unique and personal.

So I think cliche-free songwriting starts with figuring out what your song is trying to say. Write it down. Don’t worry about rhymes, music, meter, or even “writing a song” per se; just write down, plain prose, what you want to say. Now walk away for a few hours. Come back and read what you wrote. Could what you’ve said be just as easily said by anyone in any situation? Then you need to get more specific. “I love you so much” isn’t enough. Why do you love [her or whoever]? Or how does it manifest? Is there a unique behavior? What makes your love for this person unlike all the other loves that have ever been the subject of a song? Were you taken by surprise by someone loving you even though you were closed off (“Head Over Feet”)? Are you so giddy that you feel like you’re actually living someone else’s life (“Wearing Someone Else’s Clothes”)? Are you unwilling to quite admit just yet that what you feel is love, even though it has all the indicators (“Almost Like Being in Love”)?

Once you have something to say that is uniquely yours, the lyric you write will be mostly cliche-free without having to try to make it so.