With the majority of Billboard hit songs being sung in English, there's pretty much no getting around writing English lyrics if you're an aspiring songwriter aiming for the international market. Although, if English isn't your first language, this could become quite a difficult challenge - but don't fret! In fact, I'm not a native speaker either, but I earn a solid amount of money every month writing English lyrics for other artists - even American and British ones! Granted, I'm a student of English literature and linguistics, but you absolutely don't need to go to college to become a great lyricist. Here are 3 things you can do right now to get your English lyric writing to the next level:
1. Learn Your Collocations
Let's say you've been working hard for hours and hours on a new project and your English-speaking friends come in and tell you to "take a break" and "make yourself a coffee". You'd perfectly understand what they're trying to tell you, right? Stop working and get some caffeine! But let's say they would, instead, tell you to "make a break" and "take yourself a coffee". Would you still understand them? Probably, but they wouldn't say that, because no native speaker will say it like that. And if you said it like that, it would sound strange and unusual to them.
But why? The reason is that in the English language, you can only use a handful of words in combination with another word. These combinations are called collocations. They're defined as "two or more words that frequently occur together". There's no logical explanation for them, so don't bother asking why. Although what you should know is that they play a huge role in writing creative lyrics that sound fluent and natural. Watch this video by mmmEnglish to get started and learn some cool and useful collocations with the verb "to make":
As Emma says in the video, wrong collocations often occur when you're using an expression that is correct in your native language but doesn't work in English. To write great lyrics in any language, it is absolutely essential to get your collocations right - or every native speaker will feel that something's wrong. While I know that we as artists are given some leeway - some call it "artistic freedom" - in our writing, you should stick to using 'correct' expressions until you master the language well enough to actually know what you're doing when deviating from the norm. I will show you a really effective way of finding collocations at the end of this post, so stay tuned!
2. Expand Your Vocabulary
This goes hand in hand with the first tip. To write convincing lyrics, you need to have a wide range of words you can choose from to express what you want to say. If you only rely on simple nouns and verbs that you've learned in sixth grade, it will be hard to take your lyrics seriously.
So what's the most effective and fun way of doing this without scrolling through a boring dictionary? Actually, there are many: Listen to songs you like and actively read along the lyrics. Watch movies in English and turn the subtitles on. Watch interviews with your favorite English-speaking bands. Read poems written by influential English writers, like the brilliant ones by Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland. Engage in conversations with native speakers you might know. There's also newsletters that send you interesting, uncommon words every day, like Merriam-Webster's "Word of the Day". Lastly, you can also look up synonyms of words you already know on thesaurus.com.
Now, whichever activity you choose - look up every word that's new to you and write it down on a list that you pull up next time you're writing a new song. Be careful though: Make sure you know exactly what your newly acquired words mean and that you're using them in the right context. There are two major pitfalls you want to avoid:
1. Oftentimes, words that work in multiple contexts in your native language don't do so in English.
2. When looking up the English translation of a word from your native language, there are multiple translations in 99% of all cases. Make sure you choose the correct one that fits the context of your lyrics.
When in doubt, look them up in an online dictionary and acknowledge all the definitions and example sentences. My native language is German and I've heard my fellow Germans choosing the wrong English words many, many times. While I, of course, always understood what they were trying to say, it's just really embarassing in front of native English speakers - you can easily avoid that by using a dictionary.
3. Use Rhyming Dictionaries
Rhyming is and will always be a vital part of songwriting. It is essential to use rhymes if you want to inject a certain amount of catchiness into your songs. However, it is not easy to rhyme well, especially in a language that you don't know too many words in. That's where rhyming dictionaries come in handy. The way they work is as simple as it gets - just type in a word that you want to find rhymes for and they give you a list of words and phrases that would work with the one your searched for. They come in form of online dictionaries and mobile apps. My two favorite ones are WikiRhymer and Rhymezone, which I use for every song I write, as they both have really useful, distinctive features. Let me give you a quick overview of what they can do:
Above is an excerpt of Rhymezone's output for words that rhyme with "stay". As you can see, the results are divided by their number of syllables. The words written in bold are the most useful ones, while the other ones are often nonsensical (just ignore those and stick to the bold ones). However, the website's engine is capable of more things that are really useful for writing lyrics, like the 'descriptive words' function:
This function gives you words that are often used in combination with the word you searched for. If you've paid attention while reading, this should sound familiar to you - yes, these are collocations. The lower part of the output shows adjectives you can put in front of your word, which is especially useful when you already know what word you want to end your line with but need ideas for what comes before it. If you don't know what word you want to end your line with, Wikirhymer's got your back:
It gives you a list of phrases and collocations that rhyme with the word you search for - in this case, I searched for "stay" again. Apparently, many of those end with the same word, but know that they're usually drastically different in meaning.
Whichever tool you end up using - you'll learn a lot of new expressions in the process, but remember: Look up the words and collocations in a regular online dictionary if you're not absolutely sure what they mean.
As you can see, there's plenty of stuff that you can do right now to step up your English lyric writing game and spice up your songs with some cool new words and phrases! One last thing though - I know that there are a lot of successful songs with relatively simple lyrics out there, but even those were written by experienced writers who used that simplicity knowingly and effectively. So don't be fooled and lull yourself into a false sense of security when you hear those songs - it also takes solid language skills to write these ones. Think of a painter who has a big, expensive color palette to choose from instead of just the dollar-store one they already used in school. No matter how simple the painting might appear to be in the end - if it was made with the big color palette, the simplicity was likely a deliberate artistic choice instead of necessity-driven and because of the artist's conscious choices, these pieces of art will always end up much better.
So if you're serious about this, don't skip these tips and get to work! Happy writing!
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