[MartynRich]

I don´t understand your approach at all. I´m not being citical by saying this because everyone is different. However, for me the essence of songwriting is making people feel emotion and (hopefully) make them want to play the song again. I nearly always write lyrics that mean something to me, but I don´t care about grammar if the song is belting along.

I´ll go back and listen to the stuff you´ve posted. You got my curiosity going at least, and we are here to broaden our minds...

EDIT - sorry, you´ve got my curiosity going 

[CaliaMoko]

My opinion is short. I think grammar is important, but not at the expense of the song (reference previous mentions of songs like "I can't get no satisfaction", etc).

My problem is, I'm so attached to grammar, it's likely I would never come up with something like the aforementioned song. If I had had that idea, it is very likely I would have written, "I can't get any satisfaction."

[Viscount Cramer & His Orchestra]

As somebody said it can depend on the genre or style of the song. A song in a certain style might well have the lyric..i can't get any satisfaction, but in the context of the high energy style of the Stones' song it works the way it is and wouldn't work the other way.

I'm attached to grammar too but, as has also been said, the song is more important than a grammatical rule. I personally set a lot of store in how a word sounds not just to its meaning. I had a lyric where the verse line was 'Here you are, dark as the night...here am I, too tired to fight.' Becky , who sang the song for me, sang 'here I am' in the first vocal takes so I asked her to change it (to what it was supposed to be!).

To me it sounds better my way with open sounding, drawn out endings to the first parts of the phrases instead of ending in 'am' which has a closed, stop sound.

Your way may well be right for you!

[Boydie]

I am also a fan of the "conversational" lyric and also the point of view that expressing the emotional impact of a song is THE most important aspect

However, I am not a fan of changing the natural order of words to make a rhyme work

Sometimes it can work but it is a very dangerous line to walk because if it sounds obvious or "clunky" I think it can instantly detach the listener from the emotional impact of the song

Like most rules we can probably find examples of where it "works" (but in these cases they usually "add" something to the song - eg the puppet on a string "that's" work with the melody & rhythm to form another hook for the song) but in most cases the "clunky" ones would have been dealt with and eliminated via a "re-write"

Nothing screams "amateur song" like a forced rhyme in an unnatural word order

[adamfarr]

Songwriting is a puzzle and nearly always a compromise. But in my book I'd say: "sounding musically good" and "staying true to your meaning" should be prioritized over "obeying the 'rules' of songwriting" or "being grammatically correct"...

On the other hand, for every creative non-grammatical stroke of genius there are appalling manglings of the English language such as "All those things I don't just say"... for which any of us who did it would be (rightly) pilloried.

[GuyBarry]

I don´t understand your approach at all.

I acknowledge that I'm probably from the "old school" of songwriting where the lyrics mattered as much as the music.  I've already noted in another thread that for some people here it seems almost taboo to criticize a song on lyrical grounds.  If I just wanted to write music then I'd write instrumental pieces, but I like writing songs because of the interplay between the words and the music.  That's what makes them different from any other art form.

I´m not being citical by saying this because everyone is different. However, for me the essence of songwriting is making people feel emotion and (hopefully) make them want to play the song again.

In my opinion, songwriting is both an art and a craft.  I'm the first to admit that I'm stronger on the "craft" side than on the "art" side, but then the main purpose of my own work is to make people laugh rather than move them emotionally.  However, there are many beautifully crafted songs that I find deeply moving as well, and I take particular inspiration from the Great American Songbook.  

As an example, take Cole Porter's "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" (lyrics here).  I heard it performed recently by someone who was leaving the country, and it's one of the most moving songs I know.  The lyrics are beautifully written and fitted to the music, and in perfect grammatical English.  I don't think that detracts from the emotional impact - on the contrary, it enhances it for me.

I nearly always write lyrics that mean something to me, but I don´t care about grammar if the song is belting along.

Sure, and as others have said it depends very much on the style of the song.  It would be ridiculous to 'correct' the Rolling Stones to "I can't get any satisfaction", because the whole impact of the lyric is conveyed by the blunt colloquial style.  But that wasn't really what I was getting at in my original post - it was more to do with occasions when lyricists take liberties with grammar or semantics for the sake of rhyme or scansion.  Maybe I'm being old-fashioned, but that's just lazy songwriting in my view.  

I've spent hours sometimes shifting words around in a line just to make sure that the scansion works, the rhymes work, the words are grammatical and it means what it's supposed to mean, all at the same time.  There have been occasions when I've almost given up in despair, but I always get there in the end, because I think it's worth it if you want to have a decent reputation as a songwriter.  But I suspect I'm very much in the minority these days.  I should have been around in the 1930s!

I´ll go back and listen to the stuff you´ve posted. You got my curiosity going at least, and we are here to broaden our minds...

Thanks.  Remember that my songs are mainly comedy so they're very much a "niche", although "Ask Me Another" is a more serious song.  Several people have said they like that one the best, but - to be honest - it was the lyric I found easiest to write.  I enjoyed writing the music because it allowed me to use an idiom that I wouldn't normally employ in comedy, but the words took about half an hour.  I don't feel I've created a really good lyric unless I've spent ages sweating over it - but that's probably just me!

[GuyBarry]

And in the quoted example the 'day that' is set up to rhyme with 'say that' with a fair bit of emphasis on this part of the lyric. It works. Without the first 'that' it would be correct perhaps, and would still work to some extent, but it wouldn't work as well.

I had a think about this and came up with two possible rewrites.   Neither is perfect, but they highlight different aspects of the problem:

(1) I wonder if one day you might say you could care.

Here I've preserved the two-syllable rhyme ("day you" and "say you"), but changed the meaning so that the singer is wondering about whether her loved one could care, which maybe weakens the impact.  But it has the advantage of getting rid of the rather unnatural emphasis on the unimportant word "that".

(2) I wonder if one day you will say that you care.

Here the meaning is identical to the intended meaning of the original, but I've reduced the two-syllable rhyme to a one-syllable one ("day" and "say").  Maybe not quite as effective from a structural point of view, but it gets the meaning across more effectively.  I probably prefer that one on balance.

The trouble with the original version in my view is that the intrusive "that" detracts from what the singer is actually trying to say.  I must have listened to that song dozens of times feeling vaguely uncomfortable about that line, without being able to put my finger on exactly why.  These things can act in a far more subtle way than one imagines.

[PaulAds]

[diademgrove]

I don't see any problem with butchering grammar to make the words fit the melody or the feeling of the song.

Should Cole Porter have started lines with "And" and "But" in Every time we say goodbye? Where they seen as grammatically correct when he wrote the lines?

Keith

[GuyBarry]

Should Cole Porter have started lines with "And" and "But" in Every time we say goodbye? Where they seen as grammatically correct when he wrote the lines?

That's a really good point.  Certainly there used to be a prescription in some textbooks about starting sentences that way.  None the less, people actually spoke that way (and still do).

I suppose I'm more concerned about constructing sentences in a way that people might naturally speak.  Another example that occurs to me is the infamous Paul McCartney line from "Live and Let Die", "In this ever-changing world in which we live in".  It's been claimed that he actually wrote "In this ever-changing world in which we're living", though funnily enough this interview suggests he's not sure.  But I've just listened to the recording and I'm pretty sure it's the ungrammatical version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7aGAIWe3uE

OK, so he gets away with it because he's probably our greatest living songwriter.  But really, Paul?  How could you?   

[Skub]

The wing song is often exemplified as a prime candidate for poor grammar in popular music.

Wrongly.

The proper lyrics are...

But if this ever-changing world in which we’re living
Makes you give in and cry.

Edit...I didn't read your entire post GB,but hey the point remains.

[GuyBarry]

Edit...I didn't read your entire post GB,but hey the point remains.

And if you'd bothered to, you'd have seen that I made that point myself.  (Although I put "in" instead of "if" instead at the beginning - sorry.)

I've listened once more and maybe the "we're living" version is right after all.  But you'd think Paul McCartney would know what he'd written, wouldn't you?

[Skub]

I've listened once more and maybe the "we're living" version is right after all.  But you'd think Paul McCartney would know what he'd written, wouldn't you?

It's not incredible to imagine he may not. Being creative is like taking a sh1t,it's important at the time,but when it's done,let the system take care of it and it's on to the next one. Listeners fixate on details,quite often the song writer finds the topic either baffling or irrelevant.

In the recording process I have been maybe 10 songs ahead of what is recorded and by the time earlier tunes come around I have only a rough remembrance of the song key/chord progression/what I played off the top of my head in a solo,that's all before you get to lyrics.

[GuyBarry]

In the recording process I have been maybe 10 songs ahead of what is recorded and by the time earlier tunes come around I have only a rough remembrance of the song key/chord progression/what I played off the top of my head in a solo,that's all before you get to lyrics.

Ah well there you are.  I write down all my chord progressions, all my melodies, all my lyrics, and I generally commit them all to memory.  I don't treat them as disposable, but as something of value.

[Skub]

Ah well there you are.  I write down all my chord progressions, all my melodies, all my lyrics, and I generally commit them all to memory.  I don't treat them as disposable, but as something of value.

Ya gotta wonder what that multi millionaire songwriter Macca did wrong,doncha?