Your Lyric Might Not be a Lyric

Like most words, lyric has deep roots. It hasn’t always referred to the text of a song, as it does now.

1876

This marks the earliest instance we’ve found of lyric being used to mean “the words of a popular song.” Before 1876, the term actually referred to lyric poetry, which wasn’t necessarily meant to be sung.

A lyric poem is defined as being short, personal, and emotional. This is quite different from other genres of poetry.

Narrative poetry tells stories. Dramatic poetry is dialogue. Didactic poetry teaches. But oddly enough, a lyric poem attempts none of those things. It’s simply an emotional outpouring.

Not All Lyrics are Lyrics

Our modern definition of lyric is imprecise, because actually all of those genres I mentioned above are set to music today.

• Ballads are just sung narratives.
• “Baby it’s Cold Outside” is a piece of modern dramatic poetry.
• On television, didactic songs teach children the basics of math, the alphabet, and other essential life knowledge.

Today we would call all of the above examples “song lyrics.” But is the song that you’re working on now truly lyric in the sense of lyric poetry? Maybe not.

Are you acting as a storyteller? A playwright? Or are you a lyric poet expressing a mood? Each of these genres requires a different set of skills and represents a completely different approach to the art. For the sake of clarity, decide now: is your current song a lyric poem? Narrative? Dramatic?

Being clear on what you’re doing is the first step toward doing it well.

roots photo by mark3186; root house photo by tanaka juuyoh