How to Become a Lyric Writer

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Tom Kenaston. I'm a singer/songwriter pianist living here in West Palm Beach, and this clip is going to be about how to become a lyric writer. The first thing you need to know when you want to write a lyric, is what you're going to write about. Songs, as you know, can range from love songs to songs about dinner, to songs about going on vacation, you know the drill. So once you know what you want to write a song about, then you want to figure out what you want to say about your subject. I primarily write for musical theater, so all of my songs are character driven, story driven, and situation driven. That little piece that I was playing, is from a musical I was writing called "The Golden Years", and it's about growing old, it's about the characters who sing are living in a nursing home at the time, and the chorus that I wanted to write was something that one of these characters might sing. It has an ironic feel to it, which works nicely, I think, with the crazy waltz sound. So, at any rate, the lyric I wanted to start with was these are the golden years because that was the name of the musical. And then when you're writing a lyric, once you have that first line, your next line has to match it probably, not always, but usually rhythmically, and also you want to include a rhyme at the end of the line. So, this is called a rhyming dictionary. There are a number of these, you can order them on the internet. I know that my first lyric was, "these are the golden years". So then for the next lyric, I go in the rhyming dictionary and look up rhymes for years. You can, obviously, come up with a million of them on your own; tears, fears, gears. So you might go, "these are the golden years, now I think I'll switch gears", and you'll come up with a lot of lyrics that make absolutely no sense, and you keep experimenting until you find one that you like. So, with the music, it sounds like this. "These are the golden years, dignity disappears". So, "dignity disappears" works beautifully and makes sense because we're talking about people growing old in a nursing home. And that was how I began writing the lyric for this song. This is Tom Kenaston, and this has been how to become a lyric writer. Good luck."