Music or lyrics first?

‘Do you write your song’s music or lyrics first?’ is one of the most common questions asked of songwriters. The answer is that different songwriters handle it in very different ways. Here are some common approaches:

Music first, then lyrics. Quite a few songwriters take this approach, writing the tune first then adding words afterwards. If you’re thinking about using this technique, a good tip is to use nonsense lyrics while you write the tune - it’s a good way of making sure that the melody you’re writing works with the common rhythms and patterns of English.

A famous example of music first, lyrics second is Paul McCartney’s Yesterday. He originally wrote the opening melody to the words ‘Scrambled eggs/ Oh you’ve got such lovely legs..’ and sorted out the final lyrics afterwards.

Lyrics first, then music. This is the posh way of doing it, beloved of classical composers. The lyricist does his or her job first - or at least a draft of it - then the composer comes along and writes the music for the song. It’s still quite a common technique in songwriting teams, but is rare among songwriters who write their own music and lyrics.

This technique isn’t really recommended for beginners, because it can be quite hard to write lyrics that actually work and fit a tune without having good musical sense and experience. Just because your words rhyme and scan doesn’t mean they will fit a tune or be possible to sing.

Music and lyrics together. This is probably the most common approach: inspiration arrives in your head as a few words with a bit of melody attached, and you build it from there. Of course, after you’ve got your basic building blocks sorted out (verse, chorus, middle eight, bridge, whatever) it reverts to the ‘music first’ model, because you’ve got all the melody you need for the song and it’s just a case of writing variations of the lyrics.

‘Just’ writing variations of the lyrics isn’t, however, that easy - which is why it can pay to keep the number of different verses and choruses to a minimum. It’s very easy to get yourself trapped in a difficult rhyme scheme in your first verse.

For  example, have a listen to this jazzy number, which I wrote years ago (and which, although sung by the minty Sarah B, sounds like it’s been recorded with an underwater piano - it’s a long story):

Anyway, Alcohol started off being written pretty much for fun, but when I wrote the lyrics for the first verse I trapped myself into a complex system of two-syllable, internal and end rhymes that I had to maintain through the rest of the song - listen carefully and you’ll see what I mean.

The music is pretty simple, but getting the rest of the lyrics down took about a month and was agony. It came out pretty well in the end, but this is the sort of complex song you can end up abandoning in frustration.

So the basic lessons are these: whether you write music or lyrics first, remember that:

• There’s no right way to write music and lyrics - you should do whatever you find easiest.
• You might do it music then lyrics one day, lyrics then music the next, music and lyrics together on the third day.
• Simplicity is a virtue. If you try to be too clever with your lyrics, you might trap yourself. Sometimes cleverness can be fun, but there’s nothing worse than having a great tune and finding yourself unable to fit more than a verse or two of lyrics to it because you’ve overcomplicated things.

Tagged as: songwriting