You lyric writers are probably going to want to check this one out. It talks about the natural flow of the language which is ultimately the most important part of a lyric, no matter how great the story might be.
Now you’re probably wondering why I say that and may not even agree with it. But when it comes down to it, without a natural lyrical flow, your listener is going to be distracted and won’t get the story behind the lyric.
Let’s take this line from the classic song “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”. Heck, let’s take the title itself, which is the first line in the song.
Now, you know how it goes right? How each word flows into the next in a steady tempo?
Imagine you said the words like this. I will put (…) where I want the lyric to break and take a long pause.
Raindrops…keep…fall…ing…on…my…head.
If you sung it like that, you would drive your listeners crazy. It’s the same words and yet sung with a break between each word or even each syllable would make it sound absolutely nerve wracking.
Okay, so can we agree that the flow of a lyric is important and that even with a great lyric, content wise, if the flow isn’t natural, the song is going to suffer.
Now, the question is, how do we make our lyric flow?
Well, it’s really quite simple. Forget about the song. Take the melody out of your head. Take the line, as it is, and just say it as if you were going to say it in natural conversation. Make a note of where the stressed syllables are.
Let’s take the example above. I will say the line and have the stressed syllables in all CAPS and the unstressed syllables or words (in the case of one syllable words) in lower case.
RAIN-drops keep FALL-ing on my HEAD.
There you have it. there are only 3 stressed syllables or words in this line. RAIN, FALL and HEAD.
Imagine had you stressed the syllables and words like this.
rain-DROPS KEEP fall-ING on MY head.
It really breaks up the flow of the line and makes it sound plain awful.
Now, is there a scientific way to do this? Well, there are some rules of thumb that I’m going to cover next. These should help you in making sure your lyrics flow in a way that will please your listener. Ultimately, that’s what you want.
So, rule number 1. The words you want to stress, in general, are nouns and verbs. Why? Because these are the main parts of your song. Prepositions and pronouns are not normally stressed. Adjectives and adverbs can go either way depending on the context.
Let’s take our example again.
RAIN-drops keep FALL-ing on my HEAD.
Okay, raindrops is a noun. The first syllable of raindrops is the accented syllable because that’s how we normally say the word in the normal course of speaking. We say RAIN-drops, not rain-DROPS.
But, there are exceptions and sometimes they work.
Look at this lyric from “My Favorite Things”
“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.”
In this lyric, DROPS is the accented syllable of the word. It works because of the melody and the flow of the line in general. So while there are rules, they are not hard and fast. Everything has to be taken in context. But when in doubt, go back to the normal course of speaking or, as the title of this article suggests, the natural flow of the language.
After thinking about this stuff, you’re going to start listening to music differently than you used to. Some songs will bother you. Like I said, some writers break the rules all the time. But for the most part, you’re going to find that lyrics flow naturally. Listen to country music. That’s stuff that really flows.
Speaking of country music, there are some words, because of the region where they’re being spoken, that aren’t pronounced the same as in other regions.
For example, take the word “police.”
In the northern united states, it’s pronounced po-LICE but in the south, it’s often said PO-lice.
Now this is important when writing a song where you want regional dialects to come into play. If it’s a country western song, you’re probably going to want to use the second pronunciation to make it sound more authentic.
I was watching a master class video a few days ago and it was fascinating what I heard the instructor do with a few lines in a song. What sounded perfectly okay to me upon first listen turned out to be so much better after he made a few subtle changes in the stresses.
Remember what I said about pronouns not being stressed? His explanation was that pronouns were pros, that they didn’t need to be stressed, or have the spotlight. They were content giving that spotlight to the more important nouns. Fascinating explanation.
And that is really what this is all about. What words in your lyric do you want the listener to focus on? Is it inconsequential words like “the” and “an” or is it important words like “love” and “hate?”
Imagine if you had said this line…
YES, I’m the GREAT preTENDer
Like this
yes, I’M the great pretenDER
You’re putting the focus on I’m? I’m isn’t really that important to the lyric. In fact, it’s kind of egotistical to think that I’m is more important than GREAT.
If you put your mind to it, you could probably come up with lots of ways to say a line that just sounds all wrong. The hard part is when you have a line that could go in more than one direction. Depending on what direction you take, you could completely change the implied meaning of the lyric, even if the actual words don’t change.
And of course you also have to take into consideration the music itself. Does the music go up in pitch between each syllable or down or stay the same. That’s why “My Favorite Things” works because “drops” goes up in pitch after “rain.”
So the next time you go to write some lyrics, keep these things in mind. If you do, I have a feeling you’re going to end up writing better lyrics with a more natural flow in the process.
For The Love Of Music,
Steven “Wags” Wagenheim