Song Lyricists

Song lyricists are songwriters who don't write music. Many people are better either at writing lyrics or music. It's rare that a person is good at both. If you're one of them, congratulations! If you aren't, don't worry, you still have many opportunities to get into the songwriting business.

Since there are quite a few people who become song lyricists or composers exclusively, all you need to do is find a/some collaborators who complement your talent. Since no music publishers publish lyrics only, this is your only option. Composers are in a better position though, as many publishers and music libraries look for instrumental music.

What are the advantages and disadvantages
of becoming a song lyricist?

Advantages:

✓ The more specialized your field is, the better you become at that specialization. (This is true about any other profession too.) It means that you can become a much better lyricist than those who concentrate on words and music at the same time. If you focus on learning to write awesome lyrics only, you get so creative at it after a while that you can easily write words to a song that will awe your audience.

✓ Since you're "forced" to collaborate, you might get a chance to co-write with amazing artists that you wouldn't have met otherwise.

✓ Writing great lyrics is easier and faster to learn. Learning to write music is much more complicated for most people. It has a unique language that can take years to learn (if you haven't studied music before). However, we all learned how to write (in school) so it should be familiar. You probably even had to write some poems. Now all you need to do is learn the secrets of the best song lyricists (that are quite easy to learn) and you're good to go. You can master these secrets from books, like Writing Better Lyrics and Shortcuts to Hit Songwriting, or by analyzing hit songs. And for your work, you'll also need some tools, like a Lyricist's Notebookor my favorite songwriting software, MasterWriter, which is a comprehensive lyric writing tool for songwriters. Many famous artist use it, such as Linda Perry and Gwen Stefani.

Disadvantages:

⁃ As you can't sell your lyrics and expect others to write music to it to finish your song, you need other people to succeed. You'll need someone who writes music and is good at playing and recording.

⁃ Because you often need to write lyrics to existing music, sooner or later you'll have to learn about writing music at least a little. If you want to work with musicians, you'll have to speak "their language". And this language is music. You'll have to learn about chords, keys, tempo, etc. To learn about music theory, I recommend Alfred's Essentials of Music Theory. And if you'd like to learn 5,000 chords in less than an hour, I suggest that you read Chordmaster Chord Theory for Keyboard, which makes it ridiculously easy to understand how chords are created.

⁃ It may be more difficult to make it if you are not multi-talented. That's why you'll have to learn at least a little about each part of the songwriting process, so you can become an artist who knows what he or she (and others) are talking about.

Music or lyrics come first?

It depends. You can start either way. If you're a song lyricist who works alone, you'll probably start with the lyrics. However, when you find someone who can compose music to your lyrics, you'll probably have to make some changes so that it fits the music better. That way the audience will feel as if your lyrics were "married" to the music. And that's what we are trying to achieve. Let's take Bernie Taupin and Elton John as an example. They often separately, both where they want, when they want. Bernie Taupin's task is to write the lyrics. Then he gives them to Elton John, who writes music to it and completes the song. Their cooperation works like magic.

And sometimes you get some music to write lyrics to. In that case, first you'll have to decide about the mood of the music, then the subject matter and the title. After that you can start writing. I suggest that you listen to the music several times before you begin to write the lyrics. It's much easier if you've internalized the music, feel the beat and can follow your heart.

I'm a song lyricist. How do I find co-writers?

Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to find collaborators these days. You could start looking close to you, in a music school, among your friends, in your local newspaper or among your Facebook or Twitter friends/followers. If you can't find anybody in these circles, search for co-writers on the internet. There are several forums for songwriters where you're sure to find somebody. Thanks to the internet, now you can co-write with anyone in any country. Using Skype, email and different forms of chat makes it really, really easy.