Why Lyrics Might Not Be The Most Important Part Of Your Song

Who wants to write better songs?

I doubt anyone would answer “no” to such a question. If you’re a writer, you want to write better lyrics, better melodies, better songs – songs that connect, that minister, that set hearts on fire.

Much easier said than done, right? Great songwriting takes time and a tenacity to not finish until it’s, well…finished.

That’s why I want to pull back the curtain on my own writing a bit and share with you what I’m learning.

I love to study songwriting. Not just great books on songwriting, but listening to songwriters and studying how they write songs.

As a songwriter, I’m always wanting to develop and find new ways to craft lyric and melody. In the early days, I was all about the lyric.

I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t it always about the lyric? Yes, lyrics are important. Especially as worship songwriters. If we’re writing songs for the gathered church to sing in worship, we need to approach that responsibility with seriousness.

But my passion for lyrics became a problem of saying too much. I was (and sometimes still am) so paranoid about right theology, avoiding cliche, and saying something of substance, that I over-communicate.

Enter my song suffering.

The Suffering Song Equation

Yes, there is an equation to a bad song. Matter of fact, there’s a couple:

Great lyrics + bad melody & phrasing = Forgettable Song.

Bad lyrics + great melody & phrasing = Unhelpful Song.

No one wants to write forgettable or unhelpful songs, right? That’s why the marriage of lyric and melody is so important.

And in this post I’m going to show you how to get the best of both worlds.

The strength of popular, top 40 pop music is the hooks. Songs are crafted in a specific way to resonate with the human brain. John Seabrook has done some fascinating research in his book “The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory.”

He says…

“Specialized teams of songwriter-producers employ a method of composition I call track-and-hook to make songs that are almost irresistible. Record labels have figured out how to orchestrate demand for top artists like Katy Perry and Rihanna, relying on their close alliance and long history with commercial radio. And the public, given the ability to call up any song they choose, still wants to listen to what everyone else is playing.”

But for many of us, the thought of top 40 radio makes us nauseous. We cringe at the thought of K-Love lullabies, Nick Jonas jingles, and anything that everyone is talking about. Something about it feels manufactured, fake, trite, and too…well…quick.

Unless, of course, that’s the kind of music you want to make – feel good music. There’s nothing wrong with that, but when it comes to the songs we declare in our Sunday meetings, we need more than tunes to make us feel good. We need truth that will set our soul on fire.

The problem with these pop songs is that we can’t get them out of our heads. While they may not be saying much, they lodge themselves in our psyche and refuse to leave.

So the question begs to be asked, how can we combine a lyrical integrity with our worship songs while also creating the melodic hooks and catchy vocal phrasing that popular songs possess?

How to Develop Songs With Strong Lyrics & Catchy Melodies

The answer, in my current experience, is to forget the lyric, find the hook, then destroy the lyric. Let me unpack:

1.Forget the Lyric – As I said before, I used to focus on lyrics constantly throughout the whole songwriting process. Now, I don’t worry about the lyrics until later. I want to make sure I have a melody I love, a syncopation that is catchy, and a word count that is minimal.

Before, this was impossible because I was trying to say too much. It was like writing a speech instead of a song. The melody was serving the lyric rather than the lyric serving the melody. When the melody serves the lyric, you get forgettable. When the lyric serves the melody, you’re on to something.

2. Find the Hook – So rather than obsessing over lyrics at the outset, obsess over hooks. Find melodies that are outside your comfort zone. Experiment with numerous ideas for every section of the song. Record them all. Take a break for a day. Revisit. Rewrite. Get some feedback. Seriously. Don’t allow yourself to settle for a lame melody.

3. Destroy the Lyric – Before you dismiss me as a “theology doesn’t matter” songwriter, hear me out. In this 3rd section – this is where you push your lyrics. But rather than saying everything you want to say like a doctoral dissertation, get creative with how you package that theology around the melody. Destroy the lyric in the sense of reinventing and reimagining it.

Let me give you an example. As a writer, I love Twitter. Why? Because of the limitation of 140 characters. That limitation forces me to say things better. Every time – and I mean every time – I take my most important phrase in a blog post and type it in Twitter, I get a stronger sentence.

Do this with your lyrics. Find the most important words – the theologically rich, mysterious, glorious words – and trim the rest. Why say in 15 words what you can say in 5? There’s always another way. Be patient and get to work.

So why are lyrics not the most important part of your song? Because without a great melody and catchy phrasing, your song is forgettable. It’s the melody that makes the song sticky.

But catchy doesn’t have to equal trite or cliche. That’s the place to focus your skill development – saying glorious, profound truth in a concise, memorable, catchy way.

Go therefore into all the world and write true, beautiful, heartfelt, theologically rich songs with great melodies.

What is your current songwriting struggle? What are you learning? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

[ois skin=”Beyond Sunday 2″]