Do your lyrics suck? Yes? No? … Maybe? I don’t care! Today we’re going to talk about the best way to improve your ability to write lyrics and GOOD NEWS! It’s stupid easy… I mean, just STUPID easy.
Step #1 – Write something every day.
Step #2 –
It’s blank because there isn’t one. That’s all you have to do. To prove this, I will use the example of a genius in our time, Kendrick Lamar.
I was recently listening to a podcast about Kendrick Lamar (thank you for the recommendation, Echo). The podcast briefly goes over what makes Kendrick so damn good at writing. He wrote and recorded A LOT before he got big. It took years, literally years, to find his voice in writing and performing. Focused action is the essential part here. You have to actually write. Not just think about writing, not play other people’s stuff. You have to do it!
I also want to point out that it took him years to get to the point he’s at now. How long have you been actively writing? A couple years? Kendrick’s first mixtape dropped in 2003. The album that put him on the map was in 2012. That’s nine years of grinding! Did he write every single day? Probably not, but he wrote enough to say he wrote every day – does that make sense?
Will you be as big as Kendrick, Hell no. Even with his genius, he was lucky to be picked up. But you can make some waves, find a good audience, and have one helluva time will you’re writing, recording, performing today! You can be a true artist.
Okay, back to the subject of writing every day.
Does it have to be pen to paper?
Hell no! You have a notes app on your phone, you have voice to text. Use that if you don’t like physically writing things out. Are there other tricks to getting better? Sure there are! But you have to actually DO IT for any of that to work! This is how you get good, not by having a Rocky montage. No, it looks more like a boring documentary on how glue doesn’t dry in the container or stick to itself. It’s long and takes something like nine years.
Back to the Kendrick example, he wasn’t great like he is now when he started, duh. He just did it all the time till he got super good at what he does. He tried a bunch of things that didn’t work, even though at the time, he thought they would work!
Which brings us back to the simple fact that if you love doing this, you’re gonna be doing all the time. So if you want to actually be a full-time artist that creates for a living, this will feel boring, but natural to you. A lot of us say we want something, but we don’t ever do it. So we don’t actually want it, despite the words we speak. THAT’S OKAY! You can still say it, just don’t put the pressure on yourself to follow through.
Is burn out real? Yes, and you should be aware of that. But something simple like writing every day for a short amount of time will not cause burn out.
What should you write about?
That’s the fun part, my friends. You can write whatever the hell you want to write! It could be a blog (whoops, just outed myself), it could be poems, it could be trying to finish the lyrics to a song you started six months ago that you think you shouldn’t release. You don’t have to release it! Not everything you put time into has to be heard, that’s another post for another time though my friends.
Just remember this, it doesn’t have to be a big deal. Write down something right now. Just go for five minutes, and I promise you that you’ll feel better, or nothing at all – meaning this was a waste of five minutes. You can bill me the time at
Scott Bomberg
23452 Radical blvd
Mesa, AZ 85306
How did the greats get that way? They just did what made them great – every. damn. day.
Dean Nelson 