Lyrical Structure Quotes

We spent a long time learning the craft of songwriting, Roger Glover and I, for a few years before we joined Deep Purple. You learn about the percussive value of words, and you learn about rhyme and meter. You learn that you can't transform a poem into a song lyric, mostly because the spoken shape of words is different than the sung shape of words. You wouldn't use the vowel 'U' or the vowel sound 'ooo' for a high note for example, its very difficult.

I write a lot from instinct. But as you're writing out of instinct, once you reach a certain level as a songwriter, the craft is always there talking to you in the back of your head...that tells you when it's time to go to the chorus, when it's time to rhyme. Real basic craft... it's second nature.

I'm trying to change the root of funk, trying to make it more progressive, more melodic and more lyrically structured.

'Hound Dog' took like twelve minutes. That's not a complicated piece of work. But the rhyme scheme was difficult. Also the metric structure of the music was not easy. 'Kansas City' was maybe eight minutes, if that. Writing the early blues was spontaneous. You can hear the energy in the work.

I write in a mathematical manner. For some of my songs, I rhyme every syllable. It's a science.

I always write lyrics first and the rhythm and the melody come from the lyrics. It always comes from the lyrics: words have rhythm and words have melody.

But when you get to a song, not only do you have to do a vocal melody, you have to write words and not be redundant and make some semblance of a story.

The music is notated first, the text follows. I might have to wait until the right kind of text or form arises. I often see the poems as “scores.”

Usually [the lyrics] go from one word to the next word - there's no finish line. The music was that way, too.

I think what I wanted to do was meet someone who knew more than me about songwriting structure and progressions and middle eights and things that more traditional writers write and I don't usually employ.

I don't think writing open-ended lyrics is necessarily an important part of writing good pop songs.

Many of my songs just come together in quatrains because that's how a hymn goes.