How do you judge lyrics?

I know if this forum is going to remain alive, we have to discuss every part of songwriting. But I find it really hard to make an assessment of any lyrics without some music to go with them. That

Flow, Wording? If I'm looking at someone's lyrics, I read it in a poetic sense rather than a musical sense. Because its obviously impossible to know what their plans are for it. It's more a literary check than saying hey listen to my song. But in the same sense I see where you're coming from, since this is a music forum rather than poems.

Im with o'rourke... some of my fave songs have lyrics, which when taken out of context of the melody are far from inspirational. I find it really tricky to rate some lyrics posted here as good bad or indifferent. i therefore rarely post any critique, however, im always interested to hear what people make of my lyrics... go figure!

it can be very simple or complex, rhyming or not, so i dont even know what constitutes 'good' lyrics in my eyes let alone in the eyes of others! am rwally interested to hear peoples opinions...

i guess i like imagery that i can relate to but that is not overly poetic or wordy. something that you dont have to work to hard to get the meaning yet juszt have that something special about them. Ive been listening to a fair bit of Justin currie / del amitri l;ately and a few lines that have stuck in my head as memeorable (although i cant put my finge on why) are:

What does love do? does it favoutr a fortunate few?

doeas it step on the hearts it can t use? what does love do?

and...

Hey, Im with you, l;et me just grab my coat,

sometimes i would sell my soul just to sit and watch you smoke...

very simple, yet for some reason they seem head and shoulders above my lyrics! :-(

I'd be very interested to hear examples of the best lyrics you people have heard today!

Best

Russ x

PS. Many apologies for the numerous typos but ive been in the pub all afternoon! :-)

PPS. and couldnt be bothered to go back and correct them all...

Frankly, I think you can tell if a song will totally suck by reading the lyrics, but not if it will be great. For example,

Genghis Khan could not keep

All his kings supplied with sheep

We'll climb that hill, no matter how steep

When we get to it.

Who knows? When Dylan sings it, it's a good song. With a dead-serious delivery and a lousy melody, it would suck.

On the other hand,

Q: Would you fulfill every fantasy I've got?

Would you hose me down with holy water if I get too hot?

Will you take me places I've never known?

A: I can do that, I can do that.

You can tell that this song will suck. You could sing this lyric to the melody of Greensleeves (probably the best melody out there) and it would suck. A turd stands out, whereas an average, throwaway, nonsense, etc. lyric is really up in the air until you hear it sung.

I don't know. I understand that musically, lyrics alone can not be judged. But lyrics alone can be judged for lyrics alone. If theres a good story to it and what not.

On the other hand, I do agree that some of lyrics being better than others is in how they're dealt with in the music. You could have a really good lyric that if it was a poem alone would be great, but if it doesn't flow with the music, in my opinion that lyric is bad. And visa versa with the 'bad' lyric poetically flowing with the music would make it a good lyric.

Confusing, but thats what I think.

Great thread. I agree with many of the points made in the original post by orourke. The quote above from Mr Monkey sums up the limitations of reading the words without hearing the music.

My classic rock record collection is filled with great songs that I've been enjoying for decades that have really bad lyrics. Off the top of my head: "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath is a war protest song that starts with the brilliant rhyme:

Generals gathered in their masses

Just like witches at black masses

But for whatever reason this songs really moves me, the mournful Iommi riffs and Ozzy's whinny vocal are so filled with passion that it just works.

I'm sure that Sabbath was panned by the critics back then for the dumb writing. Which brings me to another point. I think that music critics tend to give better reviews to lyric/poetry oriented music because the people who write reviews are writers, as in people with degrees in English (or whatever language they're writing in). So you get great reviews from old windbags like Patti Smith and Lou Reed, but find the records are basically poetry readings with a little bit of rock music to make it go along. Though I was a big fan of Smith and Reed back in their hay-day because they were able knock out good catchy rock tunes with some amazing wordsmanship.

If I have any point to this rambling it's that well written lyrics are a beautiful thing, I think people ought to put plenty of work into them, but sometimes if the music and performances are amazing you can get away with some pretty dumb crap and still achieve greatness.

Hi orourke,

There's a name for the ideas you're expressing in your initial post: prosody.

And you are right...poetry and lyrics are completely different animals. There are many distinctions, the most important being (IMO) that lyrics are meant to be sung. A passage that looks good on paper and works as a poem might be very difficult to sing or marry to a melody.

So you are correct...you can't judge a song by lyrics alone. However, there is still value in posting them. Even without the music you can still spot errors like tense, person, rhyme, and meter.

Even advanced songwriters will use other writers as a sounding board for their lyrics, just to get a fresh pair of eyes on them. They rarely make the mistakes I mentioned above. Instead they are looking for things like verses that aren't supporting the chorus enough or lines that are too tell and not enough show , if you know what I mean...lyrics that don't just tell you what happened, but show you with vivid imagery.

CHeck out the songwriting page on my website for more detail on this.

A

I tend to not like lyrics that are overly poetic yet I don't like it when they're not poetic enough. Clever is good, but TOO clever can be a disaster unless its really jamming with the music and the mix is done so the listener isn't supposed to focus on the vocals. I don't like parody lyrics or comedy music. I get my comedy from comedians, not musicans. Know what I mean jellybean?

I don't really like obvious rhymes and if it doesn't have any musical qualities that make it interesting, I fast forward it. I'd be really terrible as a label talent scout.

this is maybe not a perfect fit, but it's the basis upon which i judge good lyrical expression.

for most lyricists and poets, i think there's as much propensity to overwrite as there is for a long-haired guy in a New Jersey coverband to overplay in a guitar solo. i always personally preferred solid, candid images to over-stated figurative poetry. that's something that a good creative writing professor in university would start getting his or her students out of in the first class meeting.

having been in this forum for a few months now, i've come to notice that cliche in this particular forum takes on a different meaning that cliche in a poetry class; example, cliches here are addressed as 'the easy rhyme' or the 'rhyme for the sake of rhyme', whereas a cliche in a poetry class is more what IMAGES are overused.

i had a great creative writing professor who instructed us to write a love poem and before we started, we immediately named every image that came to mind: as i'm sure you can guess, they were: hearts, broken hearts, rose, the word "love", soulmate, connection, warm, blah, blah f*cking blah. you already know them all. after about ten minutes of us writing all the images and thoughts that we thought of, we put them on the board and weren't allowed to use a single one of them. everybody's poetry jumped about a thousand points that day; we had to write about individual experiences in love, not hallmark card commercial bull{censored}.

i suggest trying to do that exercise to any and all of you.

that's basically what i think of when i think of cliche. subjects and poetic devices themselves can be cliche, too. i'm so sick of hearing greek mythology being used in poetry and songs to "substanciate" the writer's 'intellectual' image of him/herself. am i alone here?

ps. i realize this may not be the perfect thread for this particular litany, but you guys got me thinking about lyrics.

pps. witches in black masses was cool as hell. those critics can eat {censored}!

ppps. i think i have to add that there IS - OF COURSE - excellent poetry that uses cliches and uses mythology, but after greatly calculated motives. better writing starts without them and adds them in when the poet/writer sees fit.

Some nice replies, you doods must have some edumacation:p . Me, I got a GED while pumping gas in the Bronx, I do the best I can.

There are some good ideas and excersises here, but I haven't had enough computer time this week to keep my end of this facinating discussion up.

Good night.

I find I cannot like a song if I don't like the lyrics. Hell, I even have trouble liking Led Zepplin sometimes.

I'm a great lyricist myself, I prefer writing lyrics to writing music. I find it more expressive. I think a good set of a lyrics does not need music to be good, if I can sit down with the lyric book of an album without the album itself playing, and I enjoy reading the lyrics, I will almost certinally enjoy the album.

To me, lyrics are at least as important as the music to a song. Which is mainly why I am not a huge fan of instrumentals.

Da doo doo doo, Da daa daa daa, is all I want to say to you.

I think that lyrics can be used as the basis for the song - and the music should support the lyrics. My main lyricist influences are Robert Hunter, Bob Dylan, and James Taylor, so my perspective is a bit skewed, but I think that the most important aspect of songwriting is the telling of a story. When I think back to some of my favorite lyrics, I think of songs that make me emotionally involved, and a super complicated chord progression with a really tight jam doesnt do much for me if the words are like Phish's Gotta Jiboo.

For some, thats the tits. For me, I like the music to support the lyric, not the other way around.

Dolan

yeah, i agree, but have you heard esther? great story/great musical support

very, very true

Great tune. I love the circus calliope sound. But Esther is another tune which supports my point - the music supports the lyric.

Dolan

yes it does; it really does

As far as the OP goes, I think it can work both ways for me - lyrics that read well on their own can be great in a song, but often the way the lyrics are delivered really makes the song for me. If a song connects with me in some way, I can easily forgive some clumsy rhymes or whatever. And why we connect with certain songs is purely individual, just as what is good/bad is subjective.

Some of my favorite songs don't read that well, but others seem so obvious. It's those "deceptively simple" ones that are tough. One of the greatest openings in rock music IMO is Thunder Road by Springseen:

The screen door slams, Mary's dress sways

Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays...etc.

Now, I've liked that song for a long time, but I always like the words more than the music. I recently saw the 1975 concert that they packed in with the 3 disc reissue of Born to Run, and the show opens with that song with just Bruce, a harmonica and the piano. The rest of the band doesn't play at all, and it's a much, much more affecting and nuanced arrangement, and really lets the lyrics shine. That version of the song is 100x more affecting to me than the original, which is a bit overblown, production-wise, for my tastes.

I will forgive weak lyrics for a great melody/groove, and vice-versa (to a point). Lyrics are important, but they are only one of the elements of a song, and I personally don't think it's possible to say that just reading the lyrics you can say whether a song is worthwhile or not, if only because there are so many different elements involved in making a song what it is.

Hi. I've lurked here a bit, but this is the first time I've posted. The question of critiquing lyrics alone is interesting. And yes, I'm one of those lit major types, so I do expect more from a lyric than the next person. But my take on this is that you can critique lyrics separately from the music. Think of it this way. If you take a piece of music by itself - chords and melody - you can find weak spots, hear the repetition, notice that there needs to be a bridge or middle 8, suggest that you go to the II instead here, leave this unresolved there, move the solo, etc.

You can do the same with lyrics. What is the emotional impact? Is there a 'story'? Does it NEED a story? What images are used? Are they tired - if so, what are you trying to depict? OK, find a new image, or a new way to convey an old one. Lyrically are there cliches or phrases that just don't do any 'work' anymore like 'drown my sorrows.' If so, CHANGE them. Don't tell yourself, well, that worked in so and so's song. Set the bar higher for yourself than so and so has set it, and you will be a better writer. (Instead of looking at another writer's songs to see what they've left in, look at what gives that writer his/her own voice. That will teach you more than noticing what cliches were left in.)

I think looking at the components of a song - from musical/melodic structure, to lyrics to instrumentation and arrangement - and fine tuning them all independently and then together, only makes the song itself stronger all the way around.

Cheers!

This is how I view lyrics as well. Can't argue with anything you've said, I agree 100%

Also, I never post my lyrics to be critiqued. I couldn't care less what any of you schmucks thinks of my lyrics;) And without the melody, it's pointless. A song lyric is much much different than a poem. Also, a song lyric doesn't have to be correct gramtically or tense-wise or any other way. There should be no rules, it's art.

Seriously though, I don't see the point of asking for a critique of lyrics. If you like them it shouldn't matter what someone else thinks. Of course, if you are questioning your lyrics, that might call for some critiquing, but then again, if you're questioning them, then you already know the answer.

One more thing: I don't agree with Chicken Monkey's idea that you can point out {censored} without hearing the music. All lyrics need to be judged with the music they are a part of.

I think there's a valid point be made for both sides. I learned to be a musician way before I even thought writing lyrics or singing. On the other hand, I've always loved to read great authors and poets and the way they could take common words and put them together in a way that flows almost like music.

Some songwriters are great lyricists and not so good musicians and a lot of superb musicians can't sing or write lyrics at all. To me, it all depends on what kind of mood I'm in. Sometimes I like to hear music without words or singing and other times I like to get into stuff totally for the lyrics.

I've spent many years playing in cover bands, and before the internet you had to listen to the record and write the lyrics down. I've sat down with songs I really loved for the music and although I had heard them hundreds of times, I found that I never paid as much attention to the words. I remember listening with some bandmates writing down lyrics and we'd get to a line that nobody could agree on. We would play it over and over, and each time everybody heard something different. We finally figured out that if we couldn't figure the damn thing out, nobody in the audience could either so whenever we heard a line nobody could decipher, we just made up bull{censored}.

This reminds me of a story Nils Lofgren told in an interview once. He was a big fan of Keith Richards, so he decided to do a cover of "Happy". ( I think some Stones lyrics are hard as hell to figure out by listening to the record). Anyhow, there is a line in the original song that goes "Never kept a dollar past sunset, always had a hole in my pants". On Lofgren's version the line goes "Never kept a daughter past sunset, always had a hard in my pants". Once someone told him that he got the lyrics wrong, the album had already been released. He called Keith to apologize, and Keith busted out laughing. He told Nils that those were better than the original and wished he'd written them.

I do agree that it's hard to tell how good a song will be by just hearing the words, but it's easy to tell if it's going to suck. Music can stand on its own without lyrics, but lyrics alone aren't music. Two different musicians could take the exact same lyrics and make them sound like totally different songs. Dylan can write brilliant and introspective lyrics and make the song work well even in his worst nasal twang. Robert Plant could say baby, baby, baby throughout a whole song and it would sound great. The magic of the Beatles was that they could write and play extremely complicated music and lyrics and make it sound completely simple until you listened deeper.

Getting back to the main topic. I would have to say that I almost always judge a song by the music first and can usually tell if it's good or not before I even pay attention to the lyrics.