Background: In my last blog, I talked about medleys–songs that had two distinct parts, both of which were played in their entirety. I distinguished it from a mash up, where parts of songs are interspersed together, but none of the songs get played or sung in their entirety. I further distinguished this from songs that had separate movements–those are suites, and we will be discussing them in this blog. For our purposes, all the suites we will look at will be housed under one title, though if you look at them on Wikipedia, you will see bulleted titles under the suites of many 70s prog rock bands, such as Yes.

Background: When writing songs, we have a tendency to write the chorus or refrain around a memorable line, and then title the song after that line.  Country music tends to say the title of the song once at the beginning of the chorus and once at the end, with it sometimes appearing in the first two verses before the chorus.  And while this can help both the listener and the singer remember the song better, it’s not always necessary.  In this blog, we will be talking about songs that are not titled around a hook, but rather the details surrounding it.  This frees you up to rhyme however you need to, without getting bogged down by making the title as memorable as the hook.

Background: In my second blog about character development, I mentioned a quote from Carole King, that praised Joni Mitchell’s ability to write for herself, rather than writing on assignment, or writing for other artists, as King did in the early days of her career.  Mostly, we have focused on people who have written the songs they sing.  But it is also important to talk about the people who write songs for other artists.  Though songwriting also involves composing, for purposes of this blog, “writing” will be focused on writing lyrics.

We will look at “writing on assignment” from four different standpoints

1. You write the lyrics, someone else writes the melody

2. You write the lyrics and the melody for a movie or TV show

3. You write the song for another artist 

4. You write the song and someone else cuts it