A lyric might tell a specific story, describe a situation, paint a picture, create a collage… Since in songs words are combined with music, which has so much power and a story of its own, the words can function in many different ways and still affect the listener.
Something I’ve found useful, once I have the lyric done or mostly done, is to revisit the order of the sections, couplets, and lines. Setting rhymes aside for the moment (they will often suggest or dictate where a line needs to be), the order in which information or images are presented can make an enormous difference.
As with melodies, we can often have too much allegiance to ‘this is the way (the order in which) it came to me’. But sometimes that initial arrangement is not optimal. We may have all the right words… but not necessarily in the best places.
So I like to fool around with this organization. To start, is the order of the sections the best it could be? For example, let’s say a song has three verses that lay out like this:
1 – Childhood
2 – Young adult
3 – Old age
That would be an obvious and sensible chronological order. But what if it started in old age, near death, went back to young adulthood, and ended up back in childhood? More challenging to write, probably, but poignant in a different and perhaps even more effective way.
Once I resolve that the overall order of the ‘chapters’ works, I look at the lines that make up the sections. If I have 4 lines, sometimes exchanging the first two with the last two is actually better. Or trading one line with another. Is it better to reveal this piece of information before that piece? Or vice versa? When I revisit the lyric I try to bring a fresh eye and ear to these questions.
There aren’t any right answers. Storytelling, in song or otherwise, is not a formula. But it’s worth the time to carefully consider the order in which I’m revealing the words and what might be imagined by listeners in the spaces between the lines (here).
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