My Breakdown of 8 Features of Great Song Lyrics

Judging a song lyric has always been a curious business. With a poem, you can analyse every word, dissecting its metaphors, symbolism, and structure. Yet, a lyric needs to exist in a song with everything else that surrounds it.

Great lyrics are also, to put it bluntly, not required. A song can make you feel something even if the lyrics mean nothing. It can mean the best lyrics are often not the ones that are most complicated or poetic. It can go way beyond just sounding clever.

Here I look at all the aspects of what makes a great song lyric. Not every great lyric needs to be all eight of these things, but it needs to tick at least one of these boxes. I’ll also be looking at how the answer can be different for everyone, and throw in some great examples along the way.

1) It Makes Me Feel Something

This is perhaps the most important type of lyrics. A writer could swallow a dictionary and use words that work together well but are hard for most people to understand. Is this a good lyric? I’d argue it isn’t if it doesn’t make you feel anything.

This is where the Noel Gallagher equation can come into play; bear with me. A lot of his lyrics are nonsense. Pulled from any type of reference and strung together just because they sound good. There is no problem with that.

Yet, he has a habit of throwing in a line that has an emotional pull. It can make the whole song feel like it means something huge. Perhaps “Don’t Look Back in Anger” is the best example of this. The title is an emotionally heavy lyric, a good mantra for life, and something that was adopted by the city after the Manchester bombings.

The whole song is full of these lines that may fail under scrutiny, but sound deeply meaningful on the surface. Of course, there are many lyricists who are able to make you feel something with deep, poetic lyrics, but even a simple lyric that makes you feel something deserves praise.

I perhaps made this my first point as it’s easy to get snobby about lyrics. Is Noel the best lyricist ever? He’s penned some great lines, but of course not. Do his songs mean something to countless people? Absolutely. There has to be some merit in that.

2) It Gives Me Something to Picture

They say a picture paints a thousand words, but equally, words can paint vivid pictures. When you hear the song lyric, you are transported to a place in time and it’s almost as if your own music video starts playing in your head.

This is particularly effective in indie and alternative music because the songs often feel grounded in ordinary life. You don’t necessarily need some grand fantasy narrative. There can be enormous emotional weight in something simple.

A wonderful example of this is one of the best lyrical songs of all-time: Common People. You can imagine this rich woman meeting this working-class boy. Imagine the trip through the supermarket, the flat above a shop, the roaches climbing the wall, the chip stains and grease.

The best songwriters can take any subject and make it feel important. As with all of the points in this article, a song doesn’t have to paint a picture. It’s just one of several ways that a great set of lyrics can be formed.

3) It Doesn’t Try Too Hard to Sound Clever

This is where I feel a lot of songwriters can go wrong. A lot try to make themselves out to be poets but end up with lyrics that feel overly contrived or with metaphors that don’t actually mean anything.

Trying too hard to sound poetic can have the opposite effect. The best lyrics often feel effortless. That doesn’t mean they were effortless to write. Quite the opposite. A simple sentence can take an enormous amount of work to get right.

Working out lyrics can be fun, but I don’t want to have to read a dissertation to try and find some forced meaning in a song. Alternatively, many songs are just a string of simple declarations that are well worked together, and it’s beautiful.

“Don’t waste your words, I don’t need anything from you, I don’t care where you’ve been. Or what you plan to do “ – These lyrics aren’t trying to be too clever; there is no twisting metaphors. It would have been easy to try and make them more artsy. Instead, they are just brilliant.

4) It Has a Line I Can’t Forget

A great song doesn’t necessarily need a hundred incredible lines. Sometimes it just needs one. Almost like a movie quote that sticks with you. Something that can give meaning or simply put a smile on your face.

It might be a brilliant observation, an unusual phrase, a devastating emotional admission, or simply a sentence that perfectly captures the entire point of the song. Sometimes a line sticks with you and you’re not entirely sure why. That’s a part of the magic.

“I’ll take the quiet life, a handshake of carbon monoxide” – No Surprises by Radiohead

“Jealousy, turning saints into the sea” – Mr. Brightside by The Killers

“We can be heroes, just for a day” – Heroes by David Bowie

“I tried and I tried, I never applied, to any of the morals that I wish I had” – Bide Your Time by The Courteeners

“And if a double-decker bus crashes into us, to die by your side, is such a heavenly way to die” – There Is a Light That Never Goes Out by The Smiths

Those lines become part of the identity of the song, often the most memorable moments when sung live. They’re the bits you wait for when the track comes around again.

5) It Tells a Specific Story

I think lyrics that are specific are hardest to write. It can be easy to hide behind metaphors. Trying to find rhyme and cadence when you’re telling a story is extremely difficult, even though the narrator can make it sound incredibly easy.

Alex Turner was a master of this, especially in the first couple of Arctic Monkeys albums.

“Well, last night these two bouncers

And one of ’em’s alright, the other one’s the scary one

His way or no way, totalitarian”

I could easily have quoted the rest of that verse. Another great example comes from Kelly Jones and the Stereophonics:

“And all the friends lay down the flowers

Sit on the banks and drink for hours

Talk of the way they saw him last

Local boy in the photograph”

Specific details make lyrics believable. They draw you into the song and take you on the journey. You don’t have to tell me exactly how I’m supposed to feel. Show me something real and let me find myself in it. They can even be fun, light-hearted, and a little bit cheeky. Paul Heaton from The Beautiful South fame is a wonderful example of this:

“And your socks smell of angels

But your life smells of Brie

Don’t marry her, fuck me”

6) It Sounds Good When You Actually Sing It

This might sound obvious, but lyrics aren’t just poetry on a page. They have to work in the song they are in. Some lyrics look fantastic written down but don’t work nearly as well once they are sung. I’ve also heard lyrics that looked almost ordinary on paper become brilliant because of the melody, rhythm, and delivery.

The sound of the words matters. The National are masters of this. In a song such as “About Today,” it doesn’t have long lines of quotable lyrics. Instead, the song has an incredible emotional weight where the lyrics seem incredibly powerful when you’re listening to them.

Others can have lines of quotable lyrics and still sound great. The Libertines are great at this in songs such as “Can’t Stand Me Now” where it almost feels as if you’re listening to a conversation. But one that perfectly fits into the song.

Sometimes you can judge a lyric in isolation; many other times you can’t. A great lyric needs to work as part of the song. “Your light fingers threw the dart. That shattered the lamp and into darkness cast us” is an example of a lyric that does work in isolation but also perfectly in the actual song.

7) It Can Be Understood Without Being Explained

I’ve avoided mentioning him so far, but it’s time I mentioned my favourite lyricist: Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol. I love a good metaphor; they are powerful. But you have to be able to understand them.

“This splintered mast I’m holding on won’t save me long. Because I know fine well that what I did was wrong.”

“All that I am. All that I ever was. Is here in your perfect eyes; they’re all I can see”

“The perfect words never crossed my mind, ’cause there was nothing in there but you”

They are all beautiful; they all make sense. They make you feel something without the need for further investigation. It gives you understandable and relatable emotion, but put in a beautifully poetic way.

You can imitate a style. You can learn rhyme schemes. You can study songwriting structures. You can experiment with metaphors. Emotional honesty put in a poetic way is impossible to fake. They contain a vulnerability that is unique to the narrator, but equally makes you feel something as a listener.

Another example is a tragic one in hindsight: Scott Hutchison’s words in “I Wish I Was Sober” by Frightened Rabbit.

“Fall prey to the blizzard head

Wrapped my hand around the glass again

We all thought that I might change

As I got older

Fell down and nothing bled

Wrapped in cotton alcohol again

“To the hilt!”

I hear from the prick upon my shoulder”

There is only one person in the world who could have written that due to a mix of personal experience and genius. Those admissions can turn an ordinary song into something much more memorable. It takes bravery and exceptional talent.

8) It Makes Me Want to Sing Along

After all that emotional weight, I end with the biggest cop out. Perhaps a song has great lyrics just because you want to sing along to it. Not because it’s technically impressive. Not because I’ve decided it’s objectively well written. Because something about those words makes me want to join in.

That’s the magic of a great lyric. Sometimes there doesn’t need to be a hidden meaning; it just needs to resonate. Yet, of course, it can still have this sing-along quality, and it can be a profound song. I’ll leave The Enemy to be the last artist to prove my point.

Great Lyrics Don’t Have to Be Perfect

So, what is a great lyric? I think it’s similar to what makes a great song. It’s something that makes you feel something. That can be fleeting and fun. At other times, it can be incredibly profound and make you see things from a different point of view.

There isn’t a universal formula for great songwriting, and we all have our own personal preferences. Some of my favourite lyrics are straightforward and raw. Others are metaphors that conjure up powerful images.

If a line makes me want to hear it over and over again, the songwriter has done something right. Even if that’s just to tell me not to look back in anger.