Understanding & Writing Lyrics, Part 1

Tips & Tricks

Published in SOS December 2000
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Technique : Miscellaneous

Writing the words to songs is often thought of as a process of pure intuition,

but there's a lot more to it than that. In the first part of a new series, Sam
Inglis suggests an alternative way of going about it. This is the first article in
a five-part series. Read Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.

Many people think songwriting is a craft that can't be taught. After all, it is
often a matter of finding expression for very personal ideas and themes; and
beyond the traditional instruction to write about what you know, people are
often reluctant to give or receive advice. This is particularly true in the case
of writing words no-one knows your mind better than you do, so how can
anyone else be in a position to tell you how to say what you think?

Everyone has their own experiences, beliefs and emotions, and lyric writing
often is a matter of expressing these. However, pop lyrics are often written to
achieve other things in addition to exploring their authors' feelings. And in
any case, the ways in which people express their private feelings in song
lyrics are learned through schooling, through practice and, above all,
through listening to other people's music. You can't tell people how to write
lyrics, just as it would be ridiculous to write an article called 'How To Produce
Records'; but that doesn't mean that there aren't ways in which you can learn
to do it better.

In this series, I'll be trying to explore some of the things you can do with the
words to pop songs. There'll never be complete agreement about which lyrics
are good or bad, and everyone probably has different opinions on the matter,
so I'll be concentrating on ways in which you can find your own voice by

learning from the lyrics that you like, whichever they are. I hope that the
ideas I'll be setting out, many of which are derived from poetry theory, will
help us to understand the different ways in which lyrics can function, in order
that we can analyse the ones we like and discover what makes them work for
us. My aim is that this will also demonstrate the often under-explored range
of lyrical possibilities that is open to us, and introduce some new ideas for
those who feel they are stuck in a rut.

Opening Up
Perhaps the most important lyrical hook in a song, with the possible
exception of the chorus, is the first line. As well as introducing the subject of
the song, and helping to establish the mood, it is the best opportunity to grab
the listener's attention so make the most of it! A good first line can often
do this in several ways. It can make a powerful statement or declaration, like
John Lydon's 'Anarchy In The UK': 'I am an antichrist/I am an anarchist' is one
of the most memorable first lines ever, because of its obvious shock value.
It's not subtle, but it's certainly effective.

You can use a first line to say something surprising or unusual, which
instantly tells the listener that this is going to be an individual record.
Catatonia's 'I Am The Mob', for instance, starts with the line 'I leave horses'
heads in people's beds' the kind of bizarre but diverting claim that forces
its way into your consciousness.

If your song takes the form of a story, the first line should hook the listener in,
so that they want to know what happens next. Pulp's 'Common People' uses
its first line to introduce the song's central character: 'She came from Greece,
she had a thirst for knowledge'. Hearing it for the first time makes you
wonder who came from Greece, and what that person's thirst for knowledge
led her to do. Gloria Gaynor's 'I Will Survive' likewise hooks the listener into
its story straight away with the classic opening 'At first I was afraid, I was
petrified'. You're immediately curious about what was so petrifying!

Why Write Lyrics?

It may seem like an odd thing to do, but it's worth asking yourself exactly

why you bother to write words for your songs at all. Different people will
come up with different answers to this question. Some write words to their
songs because they have ideas, opinions or stories that they want to be
heard by an audience, or because they want to make their audience feel
particular emotions, or because they want their audience to identify with
them. Others write words because it's conventional for the style of music in
which they're working to have lyrics, or because the human voice is an
important musical instrument in that style and it needs to have some words
to sing.

Answers to the question can thus be boiled down, roughly, to the question of
whether you start writing lyrics with some message or effect in mind, or
whether you simply want something that sounds right with your music. Weak
lyrics can frequently be traced right back to this issue. On the one hand,
songwriters get carried away by the message they want to put across, and
concentrate on making their point at the expense of subtlety, elegance,
poetic quality, or fit with the melody. On the other, songwriters tend to resort
to clich and boring, generic phrases when they have nothing to say but need
to produce words to fit a tune.

Starting To Write

So what can you do if you or your collaborator has come up with a cracking
melody, but you have absolutely no idea what the words should even be
about? Or what if you have the burning desire to write about something that's
happened in your life, but no idea how to turn events into words? There are,
proverbially, many ways to skin a cat, and there are equally many ways to
approach lyric writing.

On Draft
When is a lyric finished? Some maintain that there is something sacred
about the first draft that it's somehow the most pure expression of what
you have in your mind. Others, more pragmatically, just keep writing until
they've got enough lyrics to fit the number of verses and choruses they think
the song needs, then they stop.

However, it can be valuable to force yourself to write more than you need,
and then to pick out the best bits. There is also no reason why you shouldn't
revise draft lyrics. Just as you might come to think that a C sounds better
than an F in a certain place, so you might decide that your original lyric is
weak in places and needs to be modified.

The most important thing to bear in mind is the final result. What do you
want out of the words to your song? In fact, what do we want out of the words
to any pop song? One common answer in pop writing is 'hooks'. We're used to
thinking that good pop songs should contain melodic and instrumental hooks,
and it's also a hallmark of many a classic record that they contain productionbased hooks or 'ear candy', such as the Auto-Tuned vocal in Cher's 'Believe'.
It's perhaps less common to think of lyrics as contributing to a song's
'hookiness', but a moment's reflection reveals just how important they can
be. What would Lou Reed's 'Walk On The Wild Side' be without its title
phrase? Would Ian Dury's 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick' have been a hit
without its bizarre but catchy chorus lyric? If Alanis Morissette had never
written the line 'Would she go down on you in a theatre,' would she still have
become a household name?

In other parts of this series, I'll be looking at what makes a lyrical phrase
memorable, but for the time being, let's stick to questions about the overall
construction of a song lyric. Whether or not you start with a firm idea of what
your song will be about, it's crucial that a finished pop song contains hooks.
The earlier in the songwriting stage you can come up with these hooks, then,
the better. In fact, why not start with the hooks?

This is a particularly useful approach if you're committed to writing the lyrics

to a song but you don't have any idea what to write about. Once you have
even one firm lyrical hook in place, you can often work backwards, and come
up with a subject or story to accommodate the hook. Indeed, if you have one
lyrical hook you can sometimes dispense with the rest of the song altogether,
as the writers of the Wamdue Project's 'King Of My Castle' clearly found.

As we'll see in future instalments, a lyrical hook has to work in three ways.
Firstly, it has to fit with the music, in terms of rhythm and melody, and also in
terms of mood. Secondly, it has to form a pleasing sequence of sounds when
sung or spoken. And thirdly, the meaning of the phrase has to engage the

listener. So where can you find phrases that meet these criteria?

In some ways, you're actually at an advantage if you don't have a

predetermined idea as to what your song will be about, because you can
choose any phrase at all without it having to fit with a preconceived point you
want to make. You could, for instance, start with a well-known phrase or
saying (Dire Straits' 'Walk Of Life', Creedence Clearwater Revival's 'Walking
On The Water'), or a figure of speech (Katrina & The Waves' 'Walking On
Sunshine', Everything But The Girl's 'Walking Wounded'), or any sequence of
words that strikes you as potentially interesting (Was Not Was' 'Walk The
Dinosaur', The Bangles' 'Walk Like An Egyptian') and which fit the melody you
have in mind.

You can often find interesting phrases coming up in conversation, in television

and radio programmes, books, films, newspapers, adverts anywhere there
is written or spoken language. If you choose a phrase that's in common use,
you have the advantage that your lyric will sound familiar, though some
phrases have been so over-used in pop music that they have lost their impact
and freshness, becoming clichs (a good number of these can be found in
Starship's '80s hit 'Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now'...). Alternatively, you can go
the other way and choose something so off-the-wall as to stick out by virtue
of its sheer weirdness.

Brainstorming: Alternative Sources Of Inspiration

I've suggested that a good way to approach lyric writing can be to start
with a single hook, which you then develop. Sometimes, these lyrical hooks
can come from the most mundane or obvious source. Coldplay's hit 'Yellow',
for example, was derived from a first line that came about simply because
the band happened to be in the studio at night, as producer Ken Nelson
explained in October's SOS: "'Yellow' was written at Rockfield when we were
there. The studio we were in is called the Quadrangle Studio the studio is
along one side of an open courtyard about 50 yards square, and we went out
one night, and because there were so few lights, the stars were just amazing.
And Guy just came up with the line 'Look at the stars'." (It's interesting to
speculate how the song might have turned out if something else had caught
his eye at that point!)

This isn't the most original line in the history of pop, and you'll often find that

you need to look beyond the obvious if you want to come up with a fresh and
interesting lyrical hook. So how can you generate these lyrical ideas? Well,
you could try the sort of brainstorming exercises that are beloved of creativewriting courses...

One approach is to rely on random or 'aleatoric' methods to generate a whole

collection of phrases, then search through for one that inspires. The
advantage of this method is that it can lead you in totally unexpected
directions; the disadvantage is that you may have to produce hundreds of
randomly generated phrases before you find one that is usable. There are lots
of ways of coming up with ideas at random. You can try, for instance,
chopping up newspapers or other documents and pulling the pieces out of a
hat, recording snippets from the radio or TV and chopping them up at random
in an audio editor, using one of those sets of fridge magnets that are
supposed to create 'fridge poetry', or putting any old word into an Internet
search engine and looking at the results. If you're collaborating with other
people, you could try playing word-association games (writing down the
results), or games such as Chinese Whispers or Consequences which can
produce unexpected results.

Another idea is to use an existing song yours or somebody else's as a

starting point. You could try, for instance, taking a line from a song and then
using the opposite as a starting point (for example, 'Look at the ground', or
'Don't look at the stars', or 'Look away from the stars'...). Alternatively, you
could try to write a song on the same subject without using any of the same
words, write an 'answer song' in response to it, or try to develop a minor
feature or character in the song into the central element of your own. You
could even take an incomprehensible lyric from another song, transcribe what
you hear phonetically (remember the old TV adverts for Maxell tapes?), then
use the results as a starting point.

Of course, taking another song as your starting point means that you risk
ending up with a song that's very similar to someone else's. The same risk
doesn't apply, though, if you base your song on a novel, painting, TV
programme, or film. You can simply use a line, idea or character as a place to
begin, or you could be more ambitious and use your song to retell the story
or describe the scene. No matter how you come up with your ideas, the most
important thing is that you write them down. There's nothing more frustrating
than remembering you had a great idea, but forgetting what it was; and all
you need to do is keep a notebook around where you can jot down lines or

subjects that might make good songs.

If you are writing 'to a message', on the other hand, the ideal hook would be
one that summarises or expresses that message in a neat way. However, it
also needs to have all the qualities of a good hook: a bald statement of your
point won't necessarily be sufficiently subtle or poetic and, conversely, even
if your message really is summed up by the phrase 'Whoah yeah baby let's
go crazy', it will still be a clich. The key is to find something that works like
any other lyrical hook, but which also captures the point of your song. The
phrase 'Take a walk on the wild side', for instance, is an apt summing up of
Lou Reed's experience of life inside Andy Warhol's Factory, and is also a
striking and memorable phrase in its own right.

A good lyric, then, needs to have as many hooks as possible certainly in

the chorus, and preferably at other prominent points such as the opening line
(see Opening Up box on page 145). I've suggested that it's a good idea to
come up with some of these as early as possible in the process of
songwriting, and perhaps even to use them as the springboard from which
the rest of that process starts. So how should you develop your song from
here?

If all you now have is a hook line or two, but still no idea of exactly what your
song will be about, there are several ways of generating ideas. You can
brainstorm: write down your hook lines in the centre of a sheet of blank paper
and scribble down around them anything that those phrases, or their
constituent words, call to mind (see the box on page 148). Another good
tactic is to think about possible situations in which these hook lines might
appropriately be used, and people who might use them. Suppose, for
instance, your hook line was 'And then there were none'. This phrase, for
instance, might be used by a tearful mother faced with the last of her
children leaving home; it might be used by someone talking about the
moment when the dodo became extinct; it might be used by a soldier to
describe the loss of his comrades in battle; or it might even be used by
someone complaining about the loss of local village pubs. You could explore
any of these as a lyrical avenue, and end up with songs that differed greatly
in subject matter (and probably in quality...).

The Broad Picture

So, supposing you have some hook lines and a rough idea of what your song
will be about, what else needs to be decided at this stage? There are
properties which usually belong to song lyrics as a whole, rather than just to
specific lines, and many of these are best fixed at the start of the songwriting
process. One such feature is that the use of tense should be consistent across
a song. In most cases, this simply means that all the lines in the song are in
the same tense, rather than confusingly jumping between, say, past and
present from line to line. This means that you need to decide at the start
which tense your lyrics are going to be written in.

However, consistency in the use of tense doesn't necessarily mean sticking to

one tense throughout a song. A fairly common device, for instance, is to write
the bulk of the song in the past tense and the last verse or chorus in the
present. This can be used to show the effects of past events on your current
feelings. You might do similar jumps between verses and choruses, or even
within a verse, or between past or present and future tenses.

The 'voice' of the song also needs to be consistent. Does the lyric represent a
person describing their own feelings, or talking to another person, or offering
a neutral description of events? In other words, is the song in the first person
('I went to the shops'), second person ('You went to the shops') or the third
person ('He/she/it went to the shops')? Again, consistency doesn't have to
mean that the voice of the song can't change, as we'll see; but it does mean
that there has to be a good reason for it. In particular, it sounds very obvious
and bad if different lines end up being in different tenses or voices simply
because they have a different number of syllables which happen to fit the
melody better that way.

If you do take a phrase as your starting point, you may be committing

yourself to working in a particular tense or voice; for instance, if you begin
with the phrase 'I couldn't care less', you are likely to end up with a song
that's in the first person and the present tense. This is not inevitable, though,
and you could develop the same phrase in other ways: for instance, you
might use it in the context of 'And then she said 'I couldn't care less',' which
would put your song in the past tense and the third person.

Looking Ahead

In this first part of the series, I've dealt mainly with the process of
songwriting. I've argued that, in pop music, one of the most basic functions of
a good lyric is to provide hooks, in just the same way as melodies and riffs do.
I've also outlined a way in which you can create the words to a song by
starting with the hooks, and in future instalments I'll be considering what
makes some lyrical phrases 'hooky' and others not. Next month, however, I'll
be looking in more detail at some of the general features of a verse or song
lyric. Consistency of tense and voice, which I touched on above, are basic
requirements for grammatical correctness and for your lyrics to make sense,
and therefore essential. However, there are other crucial choices that can be
made about the general form and purpose of your song lyrics, and next
month's instalment will be devoted to understanding and making these
choices.
This is the first article in a five-part series. Read Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part
5.
-----------Understanding & Writing Lyrics, Part 2: Modes
Tips & Tricks
Published in SOS January 2001
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Technique : Miscellaneous

Whenever we hear or read song lyrics, we are hearing the voice of a person,
whether that voice be the songwriter's own, exploring his or her own
emotions and feelings, or someone else's. The second part of Sam Inglis'
series explains how you can write for different voices to put across different
messages. This is the second article in a five-part series. Read Part 1, Part 3,
Part 4 and Part 5.

In last month's outline of a possible approach to lyric writing, I mentioned

that at some stage you will be faced with the need to make certain general

decisions about the words to each song. These decisions can be, and often
are, made unknowingly or unconsciously, but they are still an essential part
of the songwriting process. It's perfectly possible to write a brilliant pop lyric
without ever being aware that you're making these decisions, but that
doesn't mean they're any less important, nor that there's nothing to gain by
making the effort to understand them.

Probably the most important of these general decisions is the choice of a

mode in which your lyrics are written. Students of poetry use the term 'mode'
to refer to different types of verse, and these distinctions are equally
applicable to pop lyrics. A useful way of thinking about the mode of a verse,
for our purposes, is as a description in general terms of its purpose what
that verse is meant to 'do'. We can think of every song as having a narrator
(see the 'Narrators & Persons' box on page 140): after all, where there are
words, there must be an implied person speaking those words, even if that
person is merely a narrator describing events in which they have no
involvement. The mode of a verse or lyric implies certain facts about the
narrator, who he or she is talking to, and what effect their words are
supposed to have on their audience.

Poetry theory describes a large number of modes and variations upon them,
but for our purposes three will be adequate for the vast majority of all pop
lyrics: the lyric mode, the dramatic mode, and the narrative mode. A poem or
song lyric is in the lyric mode if its primary purpose is to express the
emotions of the narrator, and to bring about a particular emotional response
in the listener. Poems in lyric mode are often designed to be sung, so it is no
accident that the word 'lyric' in pop music is derived directly from this mode.
As we shall see, however, not all pop lyrics are written in the lyric mode and,
of the other modes which are relevant to songwriting, by far the most
important are the dramatic mode and the narrative mode. A verse belongs to
the dramatic mode if it forms a speech or address by the narrator to someone
or something in particular, while a narrative verse is one that tells a story.

Just as it's usual to stick with a particular narrator and time (see the 'Time &
Tense' box on page 142) throughout a song, it's also normal to stay within a
particular mode (although, as we'll see, jumping from one mode to another
can be an effective device in some situations). The best songwriters are those
who can use the range of different modes, times and voices effectively. It's
quite common these days to hear artists whose individual song lyrics are
alright if heard in isolation, but become narrow, repetitive and often grossly

self-centred or introspective when you hear an entire set or album. This is

often because the songwriter works only in the lyric mode, and all their songs
use the same first-person narrator, only ever talking about their own feelings;
it's like hearing a singer who has a great voice, but who only sings three
notes. An understanding of the possibilities that each of the major modes
presents is very useful in thinking about which direction to take your lyrics, so
let's go into more detail about the three principal modes I've mentioned.

The Lyric Mode

The lyric mode is, unsurprisingly, a staple of all forms of pop music, and as
I've already mentioned, some bands use it to the exclusion of all others.
'Complaint Rock' artists (Nirvana, Radiohead, Bush, Nine Inch Nails and so
forth) tend to operate mainly in this mode. The Rolling Stones' '(I Can't Get
No) Satisfaction' is an example of a song in the lyric mode expressing the
feeling of frustration. Likewise, The Beatles' 'Yesterday' is a straightforward
expression of sorrow at losing a lover. Other examples of songs in the lyric
mode are legion: a representative sample might include Elvis Presley's 'All
Shook Up', The Police's 'Walking On The Moon', James Brown's 'I Feel Good',
XTC's 'Senses Working Overtime', Neil Young's 'Heart Of Gold', The Velvet
Underground's 'Heroin', The Beach Boys' 'Good Vibrations' and Bacharach &
David's 'I'll Never Fall In Love Again'.

Narrators & Persons

Every song can be thought of as having a narrator in other words a
real or imagined person who is the 'voice' of the song. When we use a firstperson narrator, we are implying that the voice of the song is also a character
in the events that the song describes; the narrative voice is saying 'These are
the things that happened to me', or 'This is what I have to say to you'. Thirdperson narrative, by contrast, does not necessarily imply any connection
between the narrator and what is being described: the narrator is simply
passing on information, with no implied character of his or her own and no
involvement in events.

The relationship of the narrator to the events or feelings described in a lyric is

expressed by the way in which individual lines are written, and especially by
the use of personal pronouns. In simple terms, we can say that a sentence is
in the first person if the subject (the person 'doing' the verb) is 'I' ('I went to

bed'), in the second person if the subject is 'you' ('You went to bed'), and in
the third person if it is 'he', 'she' or 'they', or a name or noun ('They went to
bed', 'he went to bed', 'Jane went to bed', 'The girls went to bed'). I, you, he,
she and they are personal pronouns: they stand in for nouns or names
(proper nouns), and refer to people.

The relationship of the narrator to events is implied by the person of the lines
in a lyric. In general, if a lyric or section of a lyric contains even one sentence
in either the first or the second person, this implies the existence of a firstperson narrator (except in special circumstances such as when a first-person
statement is put into the mouth of a character in the song).

The lyric mode always uses a first-person narrator, and many of the songs
mentioned above take the direct approach of simply describing, in the first
person, the narrator's feelings or emotions. This can be a very effective way
to communicate, but don't forget that there are other ways to write in the
lyric mode. Rather than directly describing the narrator's emotions, you can
describe other things about them or their circumstances which imply that
they have particular emotions. For instance, the soul classic 'Dock Of The
Bay' contains few direct references to emotions or feelings, but it is still a
song in the lyric mode. For the most part, all that is actually said is that the
narrator sits by the dock and watches the days go by, but the way this is
described powerfully conveys the aimlessness and world-weariness that have
led him to this state. He knows that he is wasting time, but he has nothing
better to do; he watches the activity going on in the world, but doesn't seem
to have the energy to do anything himself; ships are coming and going, but
he is stuck on the dock of the bay.

One of the most important points about writing in the lyric mode is that songs
in the lyric mode do not necessarily have to be true to the feelings of the
author or singer: the first-person narrator whose voice the lyric represents
need not be you. He or she can, for instance, be another person or group of
people, or even an animal. You can use the lyric mode to try to get inside the
mind of and express the emotions felt by anyone, real or fictional. The key to
avoiding coming across as self-centred is to do just this to ensure that the
narrator in your songs is not always obviously you!

Many songs in the lyric mode are written in the present time, describing the

singer's feelings now, but this mode can also be used in the past, to describe
what your feelings were. You can even write in the future this is perhaps
most often used in a 'conditional' sense, describing how you'd feel if
something in particular occurred.

The Dramatic Mode

Verse is described as being in the dramatic mode if it consists of a speech or

address made to someone or something. This is not the same as being about
a person or thing: a song can be in the lyric mode and yet be about another
person, for instance. If a verse's main aim is to give voice to the narrator's
feelings, then it is still in the lyric mode, even if the particular feelings in
question are directed towards another person; good examples include The
Beatles' 'Something', The Kinks' 'David Watts', and Guns & Roses' 'Sweet
Child O' Mine'. Although these songs consist mainly of descriptions of the
people they're about, the lyrics are not addressed to anyone in particular
they simply make clear the narrators' own feelings towards those people.

A verse in the dramatic mode, by contrast, takes the form of a message being
delivered to a specific thing, person or group of people it is a verse
intended to tell someone something. Gloria Gaynor's disco classic 'I Will
Survive' is a perfect example of a song in the dramatic mode: she is
addressing her ex-boyfriend and telling him to get out of her life. Dolly
Parton's 'Jolene' is a message to another woman not to meddle with Dolly's
man, and there are many similar country songs. A few other representative
examples of songs in the dramatic mode might include Carly Simon's 'You're
So Vain', The Beatles' 'Hey Jude', Rod Stewart's 'Maggie May', Alanis
Morissette's 'You Oughta Know', ABC's 'Poison Arrow', The Spice Girls'
'Wannabe' and Elvis Presley's 'Hound Dog'.

The dramatic mode is probably most often used in this way, to deliver a
message to someone important in the narrator's life. As with the lyric mode,
however, it's possible to employ the dramatic mode in other ways. The
message of the song can be directed not at any one person, but at a group of
people, or even at everyone as it is, for instance, in gospel songs such as
Curtis Mayfield's 'People Get Ready'. Alternatively, it can be directed at an
animal, or at a place, or at an inanimate object, as in songs like The Kinks'
'Lazy Old Sun' (from Something Else). Elton John's 'Candle In The Wind', in

both its versions, is a special kind of dramatic verse called an 'apostrophe', in

which the speech is directed at someone or something known to be either
abstract, non-existent or dead. While songs in the dramatic mode can employ
descriptions of events that happened in the past, or will happen in the future,
they are written as if addressing the subject now.

I mentioned that using different narrators in different songs can be the key to
working in the lyric mode, and this is more common and even more important
in the dramatic mode. Songs in the dramatic mode are often written in
character, like Kate Bush's 'Wuthering Heights', in which she takes on the
character of Cathy from the novel of the same name. Other examples include
Suzanne Vega's 'Luka', in which the narrator is a battered wife talking to her
downstairs neighbour, and the Rolling Stones' 'Lady Jane', in which Mick
Jagger addresses a bevy of fictional upper-class ladies. You can also write
duets in the narrative mode, where two singers address each other again,
these are often done in character. The country classic 'Jackson' (recorded by
Johnny Cash and June Carter, among others), for instance, sees the duetting
singers take on the role of sparring husband and wife, and the Pogues'
'Fairytale Of New York' works along similar lines.

Time & Tense

We often speak of entire song lyrics, poems or novels as being 'in the
past tense', or 'in the present tense'. Technically, though, individual
sentences are the only things that can have tenses and given that most
poems, song lyrics and novels contain sentences in several different tenses,
it's probably better to say that a song lyric is narrated in present, past or
future time, meaning that a situation is being described as it existed in the
past, as it exists or came to exist now, or as it is going to exist in the future.
Consistency is, again, the key. If you start describing an event as having
happened in the past, you shouldn't suddenly switch to talking about the
same event as if it's going on now, unless there's a good reason to do so.

Tense is the feature of a sentence that allows it to express time, and is in turn
determined by the different ways that verbs within that sentence can be
modified. We tend to think of English as containing three basic tenses past,
present and future which correspond to the three divisions of time I've
used. This, however, is something of an oversimplification, because there are
in fact anything up to at least 12 tenses, depending on how you look at them.
When you write a lyric about events that happened in the past, you'll tend to

end up using sentences in several different past tenses, and when you write
in the present, you'll probably use several different past and present tenses.
In general, any use of a present tense implies that a lyric as a whole is in the
present time, even if most of the sentences are in past tense it implies that
the information you've given about the past is given because it describes how
the present situation came to be.

Some tenses are more widely used in songwriting than others. The most
important are:
The simple past tense is used to describe events that happened at some
point in the past and which are now completed: 'I went to sleep', 'I fell off the
chair', 'You said you loved me', 'They worked hard'.
The past progressive tense is used to describe events that were going on at
a particular time in the past that is being talked about now (and which might
still be going on): 'I was going to sleep', 'I was feeling low', 'You were keeping
still', 'It was getting late'.
The past perfective tense is used to describe events that had already been
completed at whatever point in the past you're talking about: 'I had gone to
sleep', 'You had already come back', 'He had left earlier that evening'.
The present progressive tense is used to describe events that are going on
at the moment: 'I am going to sleep', 'You are looking good', 'They are hoping
for too much'.
The present perfective tense is used to describe particular events that, at
the present moment in time, have finished: 'I have cooked the chicken',
'You've done it this time', 'He's left for the night'.
The simple present tense is used to describe states of affairs usually
general rather than specific that have started but haven't yet finished,
without implying anything about when they started, or whether they are
active at the present moment: 'I go to school', 'I love her', 'You smell', 'They
like it'.
The present perfect progressive (!) tense is used to describe states of
affairs once again, usually general rather than specific that existed in
the past and may still exist, without implying anything about when they
started: 'I have been working too hard', 'You've been telling lies', 'He's been
cheating on you'.

The Narrative Mode

The narrative mode is probably the most straightforward of the common song
forms a verse is in the narrative mode if its main point is to tell a story.
Although some of the songs I picked out as examples of the lyric and
dramatic modes incorporate elements of narrative, such as the first verses of
'I Will Survive', 'Maggie May' and 'You're So Vain', these are secondary to the
main aim of the song. Songs in the narrative mode just tell a story, rather
than using stories to explain the narrator's feelings or to convey a message.

Narrative-mode songs are common in all styles of pop music, but especially in
folk and country, because a lot of traditional songs are story-based. Tom
Hall's country standard 'Harper Valley PTA' (recorded by Jeanne C Riley and
Dolly Parton, among others) is essentially a story set to music, as are The
Beatles' 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer', 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da' and 'Eleanor Rigby',
Don McClean's 'American Pie', Squeeze's 'Up The Junction', Paul Simon's 'Still
Crazy After All These Years', Craig David's 'Seven Days', Elvis Presley's
'Jailhouse Rock', and the traditional songs 'Whisky In The Jar' (recorded by
Thin Lizzy, among others) and 'Matty Groves' (recorded by Fairport
Convention and others).

Perhaps because the narrative mode has no purpose outside telling a story
it does not set out to say anything about the singer's feelings, or to make a
point to someone in particular it's important that lyrics written in this style
develop through the song. Verses in the lyric or dramatic modes can simply
consist of lists of unrelated or loosely related points, but a song in the
narrative mode needs to have the attributes of a good story. It needs to
describe interesting events and people and, like exciting stories, good
narrative songs often also have an engaging beginning and a satisfying
resolution at the end. However, this doesn't necessarily mean you have to
describe events in chronological order. You can jump into the middle of a
story at a particularly exciting point, to grab the listener's attention straight
away (this technique is known as 'in medias res'), and use later verses to fill
in any gaps. You don't have to restrict yourself to telling just one story, either:
in Lou Reed's 'Walk On The Wild Side', for instance, every verse tells the story
of a different character.

Narrative-based songs are often written in the past tense, but there is no
reason why they have to be. The Beatles' narrative songs mentioned above
all tell their stories in the present tense, for instance, and it helps to add a
sense of immediacy to the story if the events are described as happening
now. It would even be perfectly possible to write a narrative lyric in the future
tense, describing what you or someone else will do.

Songs in the lyric and dramatic mode always use a first-person narrator,
describing his or her feelings in the first person, or giving a personal message
to the listener. In the narrative mode, however, you have a choice between
using a first-person narrator, describing events as though happening to him
or her, and a third-person or 'omniscient' narrator. The omniscient narrator
knows about the events described, and talks about them in the third person,
but is not himself involved in those events.

Shifting from third-person to first-person narrative can be an effective trick if

done well. This gives the initial impression that the narrator is merely a voice
with no involvement in events, before either revealing that they are in fact
involved, or starting to tell the story from the point of view of someone else
who is. This is nicely done in 'Harper Valley PTA'. The song tells the story of a
divorced single mother whose daughter brings home from school a note from
the PTA, complaining about the mother's behaviour. Incensed, the mother
storms off to a meeting of the PTA and exposes them for the 'Harper Valley
hypocrites' they are and at the very end, the song shifts to the first person,
with the last verse narrated by the daughter.

Experimenting With Modes

The concept of modes may seem quite technical, but it's worth getting
to grips with. As I've tried to explain in the main text, it's a great tool for
understanding why the lyrics of classic songs work and it can also be
invaluable when you're thinking about the most effective way to turn an idea,
lyrical fragment or situation into a song.

Some basic ideas could form the basis of a song in any of the three modes.
Indeed, it's interesting to try taking the situation at the heart of an existing
song and deliberately setting out to examine that same situation using a
different mode. You can, for instance, take the scenario of a narrative-based
song such as 'She's Leaving Home', 'Up The Junction', or 'Whisky In The Jar',

and think about how the events and characters might be presented in other
modes. The girl who's leaving home leaves a note for her parents: the
contents of that note could form a song in the dramatic mode. 'Up The
Junction' tells the story of the narrator's getting together with 'the girl from
Clapham', the birth of the couple's baby, his decline into drunkenness, and
the resulting breakdown of the relationship. The same events could be seen
from the point of view of the wife or child, either as a simple narrative or as
an angry speech addressed to the feckless husband. Stories can often be
rethought to create songs in the lyric or dramatic modes because they have a
lot of descriptive content, and usually involve several characters. It's often
harder to make a story out of a song in the lyric mode, because such songs
tend to describe feelings rather than events.

When it comes to writing songs from new ideas, it can be worth writing in a
different mode from the one that first springs to mind. Suppose, for instance,
you want to write a straightforward love song about your boyfriend or
girlfriend. There are already a million and one songs in the lyric mode which
mix explanations of the singer's feelings with gushing descriptions of the
object of his or her affections. If you choose to do the same, then unless you
have stumbled upon a genuinely new way to say 'She's very nice, and I love
her,' you're unlikely to produce a lyric that will stand out from the crowd. So
why not try to come up with a different angle?

Some of the most successful love songs work because they find a simple but
effective way of making the singer's feelings for his or her loved one clear,
without just describing those feelings in the lyric mode. Like it or loathe it,
Eric Clapton's 'Wonderful Tonight' stands out as a distinctive love song
because it is told as a narrative. Rather than just saying 'I love you', it tells
the story of an ordinary evening out with his wife in such a way that it
becomes clear, purely from the description of what the characters say and
do, that the narrator is in love with her. Billy Joel's equally icky 'Just The Way
You Are' is, likewise, distinctive because it expresses more or less the same
message, but uses the dramatic mode.

If you want to write a love song about someone, then, rather than simply
saying 'She's very nice and I love her', why not think of a story about some
incident in your relationship, however trivial, which illustrates the love you
feel? Or why not think about something that has been said between you, and
develop it into a dramatic address? Everyone knows what it's like to be in
love, and while this means that everyone can relate to a song that just says

'She's very nice and I love her', it also makes it very hard to come up with a
fresh way of describing this feeling directly. The events and conversations
that have happened in your relationships are, by contrast, unique and thus
allow you to say something unique about being in love.

Combining Modes

Poets tend to see themselves as working within traditions, and therefore tend
to stick closely to whatever conventions are characteristic of their chosen
mode. Any lyrical traditions there are in pop songwriting, however, are much
less rigid, and so writers often blur or cross over between what poets would
consider firm genre boundaries.

Moving between poetic modes can produce very powerful song lyrics, if it's
done well. Take, for instance, Pulp's 'Common People'. It begins as a simple
first-person narrative, describing Jarvis Cocker's meeting with a girl. As the
song progresses, however, Jarvis's indignation at her ignorance and prejudice
becomes more and more apparent, and he begins to switch into the dramatic
mode, addressing her directly as 'you': 'You'll never live like common people.'
The progression from telling a story to the listener to addressing its subject
personally works perfectly: the opening verses hook the listener in with an
interesting narrative, while the later ones bring home the point that the girl in
question is a real person, and that the behaviour and beliefs described in the
narrative are repugnant.

Another common way of moving between modes is to write verses in one

mode and choruses or middle eights in another. The Beatles' 'She's Leaving
Home', uses a particularly elegant version of this mode-switching trick,
wherein the lyrics given to the lead and backing vocals function in different
modes. The song describes a young woman sneaking out of her house early
in the morning to run away from her loving but puritanical parents, and the
part sung as the lead vocal is written as a third-person narrative, offering a
nicely plain and understated description of events which is much more
effective than the maudlin sentimentality a more heavy-handed approach to
the subject would produce. Rather than telling us how the characters must
feel, for the most part Paul McCartney simply allows us to infer it from lines
such as 'Leaving the note that she hoped would say more.' When the backing

vocals come in during the chorus, however, they are written in the firstperson plural and in the lyric mode, narrated by the parents ('We gave her
everything money could buy...'). This sudden switch from omniscient
narration to direct, personal description brings home the parents' feelings of
sadness and incomprehension with a real wrench.

Moving Modes

If you're ever stuck when writing lyrics, or you feel that you've got into a rut,
it can be useful to look back over the words to your songs and work out what
makes them tick. You may find that you've always written in the lyric mode,
or that the narrator in all of your songs is the same, and it can be an
interesting exercise to deliberately set out to write in a mode or time that you
don't normally use, or that is not the obvious one with which to tackle your
chosen subject (see the 'Writing In Different Modes' box). If you set yourself
to write, say, a dramatic song addressed to an inanimate object, the chances
are you'll come up with something memorable if only because it's different.
And while standing out from the pack in terms of musical style may be to risk
becoming uncommercial, a quirky or offbeat lyric can often add to the
commercial potential of a track, giving it that special something to lift it
above other music in the same vein.

In the third part of this series, I'll focus on the nuts and bolts of lyric-writing:
words and sentences, and the ways in which they can be arranged. Until we
enter this murky world of metre and rhyme, happy writing...