The fol­low­ing is just a short list of words whose inclu­sion in lyrics I feel should be seri­ously con­sid­ered, rather than hap­haz­ardly sprin­kled in.

While some are overused, oth­ers too obvi­ous, most are blunt and do not con­vey any crafts­man­ship that may be present in the lyrics. In short, they’re a turnoff. As soon as I hear one of these words my expec­ta­tions just drop. That’s not to say these words can’t be used well, but the more of them included in one piece, the less likely it is that the work is a bril­liant gem.

When writ­ing one should strive to ‘show’ and not ‘tell’. The writ­ing then takes on a more expe­ri­en­tial tone and not one of a third grade book report on a teenager’s breakup let­ter. I felt used, then I felt angry, then I felt … blah, blah, blah. One can only hope that pro­duc­ers in the record­ing stu­dio would have an inter­ven­tion before any­thing was com­mit­ted to tape. Alas, all too often ter­ri­ble lyrics slip out into the wild and sully what would have been a per­fectly lis­ten­able song.

The List:

Dark, Dark­ness, Black, Night, Pain, Hurt, Bro­ken, Sad, Angry, Rage, Feel, Love, Under­stand, Cry, Tear, Empty, Cold, Stone, Want, Alone, Care, Blood, Hide, Mask, Heart, Every­body, No one, Run

Tags: Cliche, Creativity, Fun, Lyrics, Songwriting

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 7:26 am and is filed under Everything Else. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.