“I am a teacher who writes, not a writer who teaches,” says Pat Pattison. “I realised when I was 35 that if I never wrote another song, I would be just fine, but if I never taught again, I wouldn’t be.”Photo: Stephen Webber
Writing lyrics is often said to be the hardest aspect of songwriting. Berklee College of Music Professor Pat Pattison has been teaching people to do it better for decades.
“I was the band’s guitar player,” Pat Pattison laughs, remembering the start of his own songwriting journey. “They’re supposed to write the songs, so I wrote the songs.” He had already started teaching philosophy and, after touring with his band, he got hired at Berklee as an English teacher in the ’70s. “I thought I’d teach a literary criticism course, but called it ‘Analysis of song lyrics’. I used Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen, Steely Dan and Dylan as fodder for the class. It became very popular, and that morphed into the world’s first songwriting major.”
Pat Pattison’s ground‑breaking book Writing Better Lyrics: The Essential Guide To Powerful Songwriting originally came out in the ’90s, and the second edition is still in print.His students have included Grammy winners John Mayer and Gillian Welch, and he has published four books of helpful exercises for lyric writers. These days, Pattison offers five Berklee online courses plus a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) called Songwriting: Writing The Lyric. A video‑based course at coursera.org, this is open to all. “At this point, two million people have already taken that class since its start in 2013,” he says, proudly.
Thoroughly Broken
For Pattison, prosody — the right relationship between form and content, first observed in great works of art by the poet Aristotle — is key. “Whatever you are saying, all of the elements should support it. That’s basically common sense: to make sure that whatever you’re trying to accomplish, all the things you use are in service of that goal. I’ve seen it many times that somebody’s singing a song on stage about a broken heart and the verses are four lines long, with equal‑length lines that rhyme AABB. My response is: ‘You’ll get over it!’ The heart doesn’t sound broken, it sounds like you’re just telling me facts! If the broken‑heartedness had been supported by the musical and lyrical structure, I would be feeling more.
“Of course, I’m never really in the business of talking about what’s wrong with songs. What I prefer is talking about opportunities to make the song better. I would look at the verse that’s trying to express how broken‑hearted I am, looking for a varied harmonic rhythm, for example, or if there’s a four‑chord structure, I could displace my melodic line against that four‑chord structure when it is repeated. I could use an asymmetrical rhyme scheme or an odd number of lines; any number of things can make it feel more like I’m saying it is! I’m always looking to support the main intent of a song or section.”
He insists that there are no rules, just tools. “There are many opportunities. For example, if you want to make your song feel unstable because the idea is something like ‘I miss you so much’, there are lots of tools at your disposal you can use to realise your intent. You could use an even number of lines and, say, shorten your fourth line, like Paul Simon does in his bridge to ‘Still Crazy After All These Years’. You could also lengthen your last line, which Paul Simon does in his bridge to ‘Train In The Distance’. You can use an unstable rhyme scheme — ABBA, for example — or a stable rhyme scheme like ABAB, and use more remote rhyme types, assonance rhyme or consonance rhyme. Instead of starting your musical phrases on the downbeat, you could start them after the downbeat.”
All Action
Another tool to stir up the listener’s imagination is the action verb, which Pattison describes as the “power amplifier” of language. As an example, he cites Robert Frost’s poem ‘Putting In The Seed’, where a seedling is “shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs“. When asked if it’s always helpful to use strong verbs or if the effect can be overdone, he warns: “Be careful what you attach your amplifier to! You can certainly blow out a set of speakers with an amplifier that is too strong. I would say that the issue is trying to make the strength of your verbs appropriate for the idea. There are many verbs — particularly the forms of ‘to be’: is, was, will be, and so on — that are very low‑wattage and don’t do anything. I’m simply recommending that the first thing you do is you learn to identify verbs and see if there’s something a little stronger, so you can bump up the wattage. You don’t want to pack a song so full that it’s relentless.”
One should leave room for the listener to breathe. “The optimum way to do that is to put your most important lines in places that have a little space after them. The last line of your verse may be your biggest line in that verse, and then you’re going through a two‑bar turnaround for people to absorb it. Make sure that your most important ideas aren’t competing with less important ideas for space.”
Freshen Up
So why do some lyrics resonate, while others seem bland? Pattison says the most common mistake is to use clichés: “Cliché ideas, cliché rhymes, cliché phrases. Writing that comes not from an authentic part of the writer, but from prefabricated material that’s been reassembled again and again. Your language can be simple and fresh without being cliché.”
As an example of avoiding cliché, he cites Cole Porter’s song ‘You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To’, as recorded by Nina Simone among others. “The title is an interesting look at how to say ‘I love you’. This I find true in most of my teaching work over the years: the more specific you get, the more sense‑bound you get, the more effective it is. The song’s second line is ‘You’d be so nice by the fire.’
“Another example is ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’ by Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin, recorded by Bonnie Riatt, Prince and many others. It starts: ‘Turn down the lights, turn down the bed, turn down these voices inside my head.’ Since it is so specific, it pulls the listener into the song.
“How does it make an impression on the listener? When Nina Simone sings ‘You’d be so nice by the fire,’ I have a picture in my head that’s drawn from my own experience. As a result, those words are actually about me, because they’ve stimulated my sense memories. That makes me feel something. Same with ‘Turn down the lights, turn down the bed...’: I see the bed, I know what colour the bed cover is, drawn from my experiences. I am in the song. I think there should be portions of the song — particularly very early — where the attempt would be to stimulate your listeners’ senses, what they see, smell, hear, taste, touch... ‘You never close your eyes any more when you kiss my lips’ [the first line of ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’]: That’s very compelling, because it stimulates me to unearth memories, so that I am a participant rather than an observer of the song.”
Something To Rewrite
Pat Pattison also stresses that writing is a process, and that the more effort you put in to refining and developing your ideas, the better the songs that you will produce. As an example, he points out that the first verse you write doesn’t have to end up being a song’s first verse. “Certainly, you might come up with situations where you write a verse and wonder, ‘Where can I go from here?’ If you can’t see your way clear, you might ask: ‘What if this was the second verse? Where would I have come from?’ That gives you two ways to develop the idea. That verse might even be the chorus of your song, you don’t know! The reason you write something down is to have something to rewrite. Writing is always the key for professional songwriters, but rewriting is the gold standard. You’re constantly trying to make it better.”
Pat Pattison: The reason you write something down is to have something to rewrite. Writing is always the key for professional songwriters, but rewriting is the gold standard.
The idea that rewriting and hard work are key to a great lyric stands in tension with the romantic idea that inspiration is everything. “Of course, there’s the cult of inspiration, where it certainly is possible to be struck by something and it turns out to be something really wonderful — and it just came out that way! That has happened to many people more than once. The question is: What are you going to do next?”
Pattison does not believe in writer’s block, he says. “It simply says ‘I can’t write anything good.’ Well, then write something that’s terrible! When somebody tells me that they have writer’s block, I will give them the following assignment: ‘I just want you to know that nobody has ever completed this assignment successfully: I want you to write one bad song each day for the next 12 days!’ Somewhere around song seven or eight, you’re going to fail! My mantra is: Don’t be afraid to write crap, because it is the best fertiliser. The more crap you write, the more likely it is you will grow something wonderful.
Pattison’s latest book is published by Writer’s Digest.“Do a little bit of writing every day. Before we talked, I just got back from the gym. I go there every day and spend half an hour on a circuit of 15 machines. My health is great, my tone is good, it’s a manageable task. I’m not going to spend two hours a day there, because it will wear me out. You can always manage 15 or 20 minutes writing a day. You could do object writing in the morning. The object writing and metaphor exercises in Songwriting Without Boundaries will be very helpful.”
From Where You’re Standing
Another core feature of any song is the point of view, and Pattison says that choosing the right perspective can turn a good idea into a great lyric. “There are four points of view. In the third‑person narrative, the singer/narrator is outside the song’s world. That’s a difficult point of view to work in, but it has a lot of advantages: The third‑person narrator is basically God, knows the past, present and future, the minds of all of the characters. For that to work, it needs to be an advantage to have a wide view and, for example, know the future. The pronouns used are he, she, it, they — no first‑person or second‑person pronouns. For an effective third‑person narrative, take a look at ‘In Front Of The Alamo’, written by Gary Burr and recorded by Hal Ketchum. ‘Eleanor Rigby’ is a good example, ‘Fool On The Hill’, Paul Simon’s ‘Hearts And Bones’, and so is John Mayer‘s ‘Walt Grace’s Submarine Test, January 1967’.”
For Pattison, the second‑person narrative has much in common with the third‑person view, in that the narrator is still outside the world of the song. “Standing outside the world of the song, the narrator can tell the ‘you’ in the song something that the ‘you’ can’t possibly know. Again, the pronouns there are he, she, it, they and you, with no first‑person pronouns.” He cites the Beatles’ ‘For No One’ and ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ as examples, as well as Passenger’s ‘Let Her Go’, Bob Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ and John Mayer’s ‘Never On The Day You Leave’.
First‑person narrative, in contrast, is all about “the I, the me”, says Pattison. “This narrative is me telling the world about myself, my perspectives and my experiences. If I’m going to tell the world about myself, it should be interesting to the world. The world should be able to take some lesson from my story. Otherwise, I’m just indulging myself.” As examples, he recommends checking out Kenny Rogers’ ‘The Gambler’, the Eagles’ ‘Hotel California’, Jason Isbell’s ‘Elephant’ and John Mayer’s ‘Stop This Train’.
The most used point of view in songwriting is the fourth: direct address. “it’s used in all the love songs, the ‘I hate you’ songs, the ‘Why did you do that to me?’ and ‘I want you’ songs.
“Direct address is the meat and potatoes of pop music,” says Pattison, but he cautions that it’s sometimes overused. “I personally have difficulties listening to a live set of ‘I/you’ songs. In keeping the same relationship with the audience, it becomes static. A song in a different point of view can create contrast in your set and make it breathe, changing the relationship to your audience and its response.”
I like Irving Berlin’s ‘What’ll I Do’ a lot. It’s a compact, skinny little song that just breaks your heart — in 32 bars.
No Compromises
When asked about his favourite song lyric, Pattison pauses. “It does vary. I like Irving Berlin’s ‘What’ll I Do’ a lot. It’s a compact, skinny little song that just breaks your heart — in 32 bars. I’ve already referenced Jason Isbell’s ‘Elephant’, which is pretty wonderful. Gillian Welch’s ‘Annabelle’ has been running through my head for the last couple of weeks. I also like the mentioned ‘Walt Grace’s Submarine Test, January 1967’ by John Mayer.”
Pattison’s final piece of advice is to always write the best song you can, rather than trying to second‑guess what an audience or a market will prefer. “I have a former student who has many hits in Nashville. He was there for 10 years without much success at all, because he was trying to write hits, trying to emulate the radio. He finally said, ‘I’m just going to write to please myself. I’m going to write the best songs I can.’ That’s when his career took off. Your only chance is to write the best song that you can. If, for 20 years, you try to write songs that you think people will like, and you get no hit, you are a failure. If on the other hand, you try to write the very best song that you can and you get no hit, you’ve spent 20 years examining, trying to go as deep as you can, do something as well as you can, and you’re not a failure! You’ve grown. If you’re writing and trying to write well, and trying to write about things that matter, you’re going to grow as a human being. I don’t think you can waste your time writing like that.”