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In this free songwriting lesson, Berklee College of Music Assistant Professor and Berklee Online instructor Caroline Harvey offers tips for keeping lyrics vague.
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About Caroline Harvey
Caroline Harvey is an assistant professor in the Liberal Arts department at Berklee College of Music, in addition to being a writer, performer, and somatic therapist. She teaches and performs poetry nationwide, and is the creator of two original voice curricula, Free Your Voice™ and Embodied Poetics™. She was featured in two documentaries and appeared on Season 5 of HBO’s Def Poetry. A past member and coach of multiple Poetry Slam Teams, Harvey has been a part of victories on both national and regional stages. Most recently, she helped the Berklee College of Music Slam Team win the “Spirit of Slam” award at the 2010 Collegiate National Poetry Slam. She has performed with Alicia Keys, Mos Def, John Legend, Reggie Gibson, Joshua Bennett, Donna De Lory, and others, and is honored to have been featured at schools and organizations such as YouthSpeaks, The Esalen Institute, Bristol Community College, Northeastern University, University of California at Berkeley, and University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).
Harvey was awarded a BFA in Theater from Boston University where she graduated Summa Cum Laude and won the Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence. Her stage directorial debut dealt with the work of poet Anne Sexton and was chosen for review by the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. She later earned a Master’s degree in Dance from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures. Harvey’s writing, which explores ideas of the sacred and tracks her belief that even the fiercest traumas contain within them the capacity for profound healing and beauty, has been published in various literary journals and anthologies including the 2005 National Poetry Slam Anthology High Desert Voices and the Harvard publication The Charles River Review. She is currently working on a new collection of poems based on the women Salvador Dali painted and a book about her most recent travels in Asia and Central America.
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When lyrics are too vague, it's a sign the writer was lazy or lacking in songwriting ability. I've been guilty of this and do work on improving. I think if the verses are vague, then the Chorus should sum it up and make you go, ah ha! I get it now. Or use the bridge to make a statement that glues the content together. I try to write lyrics that have a simple surface level understanding but with a deeper (maybe metaphorical) sub textural meaning. The way to do this is to write down a major theme to you song; the big idea, mission statement, plot, whatever you want to call it. Then, think of simple ways, words and phrases to speak around that theme without being too "on the nose" with it. Then in the chorus, hammer that theme home so the verses have context and make sense. And for God's sake, get good a near rhymes (not exact rhymes). Avoid the over used cliché easy rhyming words. The listener shouldn't know what rhyming word is coming at the end of that phrase… if they do, it's boring.
She makes interesting points but the title is a bit misleading. I wanted to know how to write more vague lyrics. The main message of the video was "don't write lyrics that are too vague".
Hey i like my pretentious lyrics. ?
i dunno i relate to vague lyrics better than really specific lyrics more often. eg if some song is singing about being stressed and having a shit day without being too specific i find it easy to relate to. but if the song is about getting stressed from getting the kids ready for school, packing lunches for their kids and dropping them off and shit…. even though i might have the exact same feeling as that person i'm definitely not gunna relate to them as easily, and i think that was what the question was about. the question had nothing to do with being obscure. sometimes really specific lyrics come off well as a persons style like courtney barnet who sings like a personal shopping list of things that happen in her day. but most cases i dont think it does.
personally I think that ambiguity is key for songwriting…but not complicated and hard to understand ambiguity… it's about finding that balance where it is simple enough but also vague enough that everyone takes something different and personal away from your lyrics. Everyone can relate in their own way, but no one understands exactly what you're saying. These songs are my favourite songs, and also the songs I strive to write every day.
I argue that her "I don't get it. It must be really smart" is wrong. American poetry went to a plain language with people such as Billy Collins and others, but such is not the only poetic approach, or ultimate means of expressing all poets' ideas, especially in contemporary times, when there is a storehouse of forms dictated by many rhythmic American language patterns that stem from a multi-racial and multi-national culture.
What may be confusing to many about a poem is the lack of background required to understand the poem, especially the limited and prejudicial approach to the wide and wonderful English language. Some so-called big words are words in the English vocabulary that lazy people refuse to harbor, know, or abide.
Particularly, her idea of "moving" a crowd of limited scope is part of the oversold popular business culture that has nothing whatsoever to do with the noblest aim of poetry to deepen the mystery of the human condition. In human life, poetry is best when it reminds us that we do not know the answers, but we try. The poet's work is never completed.
Poems are not lyrics. A lyric is only about music. It exists to be a companion for music. Poetry stands by itself. Some songwriters would try to be vague, but most want to send either an emotion, or an image. A story song won't be vague, it will be direct. A song about feelings can be any approach. Trying to seem profound is a mistake, and the artist will do a lot of growing up in public. Stick to thoughts and feelings that inspired you at the start, then you have maximum power to get across…
This woman is awesome.
The way I look at it. The more vague on verses. The clearer you should be on the chorus. Provide the mystery first. Then resolve it. I'm finding that tension/resolution works for lyrics. Not just tone and cadence.
Thanks for the video.
I Like VagueLyrics…I Was Listening To The Killers – Read My Mind And I Didn't Understand The Lyrics… But While Listening I Had My Own Idea's Of What The Lyrics Meant In Real Time. Its Hard For Me To Explain It But I Really Love Vague Music. Sometimes I Want To Create My Own Emotion
Joni Michelle kept saying something in a recent interview, quoting from Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche something about muddying the waters so they seem deep. Very cool.
'On the Poets'
They [the poets] also aren't clean enough for me, they cloud all their waters, so it seems deep.
very well put! thanks! vague lyrics sometimes drive me crazy!!! the grunge band Bush, for example…or 311…you start listening and it's like, these guys aren't deep, they're pot-smoking 8th graders, pretending to be deep… hehe…