Lyrics on a page or a screen can be deceptive. They can ‘read well’, they can look cool. The scan might work – on paper or screen – and they might have the ‘right’ amount of syllables in each line. If you recite them they might sound nice, even powerful.

But lyrics aren’t poetry… nor are they prose. They’re musical words.

They’re like dialogue in a play or movie. It can be nice on the page, but if it doesn’t come to life in the actor’s speech – on the stage, in the scene – it doesn’t work, it’s not good.

And in reality, musical words – lyrics, that is – come to life only as music, as sound. They’re only alive when sung (or rapped). If lyrics don’t work as music and sound, they don’t work… because every single part of a song is sound.

The proof of a lyric is in the singing. I’m not saying content (what the lyric is saying) doesn’t matter; of course it does. But singers don’t sing a song just because it’s meaningful. It has to feel good to them when they sing it. And ultimately singers decide if a song lives on.

The greatest writers of lyrics have always focused on writing for singers; themselves or someone else.

Since I didn’t start writing and singing my own songs early on, this part of songwriting (the sound and singability of a lyric) hasn’t come naturally to me. I’ve had to pay attention and I continue to learn the hard way that content is not the only thing expressed by words in a song. The sounds of the words have a meaning as well. That’s the musical part of lyrics.

It’s why I like the phrase musical words. Because, when they’re at their best, that’s what lyrics are.

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