Why You Should Write Out Lyrics to Songs You Like as a Songwriter

If you're anything like me, you spend/spent a lot (I mean a lot) of time in class growing up writing the lyrics to your favorite songs on hand outs and in notebooks during class. Sure, sometimes I drew eyes or those 3-D boxes, but mostly I just wrote the lyrics to "All Too Well" by Taylor Swift and marveled at their beauty.

But why should you do this as a songwriter?

When we are trying to find our voice and style as vocalists and intrumentalists, we learn other people's songs. We listen closely to how they sing/play it, then steal what we like and change the rest. We sing or play the songs over and over, adjusting things and tweaking them until we've made it our own. Writing out lyrics you like is a little bit like that.

You may just be copying words, but your brain will pick up on things you don't notice when you just listen or even when you just write them out once. Things like internal rhyming and themes that carry from the first line to the end. Subtle but impactful things like words that have similar consonants being chosen even when another word would also work or even make more sense.

How should you do it?

You can do it however works best for you but you really should be doing it by hand with pen and paper. If you're someone who takes notes at school or at your job, you might do it in the margins or, if you want to keep your notes neat, on a piece of paper peeking out from under them.

As I write the lyrics out, I focus on each line so I can pick up on quirks or cool things about the line. Then I focus on the section, sometimes rewriting while focusing on it more holistically. What do you notice as you're writing? What do you pick up on?

What songs should you write out?

Personally I find it works best if I focus on a section of a song that I find particularly well written-- the bridge to "All Too Well," for example. Writing it over and over, finding the things that stick out to me each time, piecing together the genius. With that song, I noticed how words with more emphasis on them have stronger consonants which added the punchiness. I noticed how the alliteration accented the rhythm and helped tie everything together.

Write out the songs that you find impressive or can't quite understand why you love them. It won't ruin the wonder you have-- it might increase it, to understand all the small things that are coming together to make the lyrics work as well as they do.

What Does This Achieve?

If you're thinking to yourself that the songwriters probably didn't think about all these small things while they were writing... you're not necessarily wrong. But that's also not necessarily the point. These are skills, whether we intentionally set out to learn them or not. Taking the time to learn them or study the craft can help you do these things more intuitively in your own writing. Figuring out how other writers create magic with their lyrics will help you make magic with yours

When you write out lyrics to songs, you're focusing in on the craft that went into that song. If you realize you like how consistent the writer was with their vowel sounds, you can do an exercise to practice that or try it out in your next song. If you realize you love internal rhyme, you can break down how it works in a song that does it well and try and use that as a template for an exercise. And by doing these exercises you'll get that skill under your belt and more easily be able to use it while you write without having to think about it.