Everything about Lyricist totally explained
A
lyricist is a
writer who specializes in
song lyrics, usually paid for by a band to write a custom song(s). A
singer who writes the lyrics to songs is a
singer-lyricist. This differentiates from a
singer-songwriter, who also composes the song's
melody in addition to the lyrics.
American Songwriting
The
Tin Pan Alley tradition is that tunesmith and wordsmith are usually different people, though some celebrated songwriters have performed both functions (
Irving Berlin,
Cole Porter,
Frank Loesser,
Noel Coward and
Stephen Sondheim for example). Among the leading lyricists of this period were
Lorenz Hart and
Oscar Hammerstein II, who both wrote with
Richard Rodgers,
Ira Gershwin who wrote with brother
George,
Johnny Mercer and
Johnny Burke.
In recent years, songwriters have written music as well lyrics more frequently.
John Lennon and
Paul McCartney also set a trend for performers taking responsibility for providing their own material.
Country music pioneer
Hank Williams and folkies
Woody Guthrie and
Pete Seeger pointed the way for
American artists from
Bob Dylan onwards. Specialists also have, on occasion, wrote for somebody else to perform (the spectacularly successful
Diane Warren for example) both words and music.
Collaboration
Collaboration takes different forms. Some composers and lyricists work closely together on the song, with each having an input into both words and tune. Often a lyricist will fill in the words to a tune already fully written out.
Dorothy Fields worked in this way. Lyricists have often added words to an established tune, as Johnny Burke did with the
Erroll Garner tune
Misty. Some partnerships work almost totally independently, for example,
Bernie Taupin famously writes lyrics and hands them over to
Elton John, who then sets them to music, with minimum interaction between the two men.
Religious Songwriting
In the
Christian hymn-singing tradition, many of the best-loved pieces have words written to fit existing melodies. The
Christmas carol,
What Child Is This, had its words set to an old English folk tune that formerly was a lover's lament,
Greensleeves. The
English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams famously set existing poems, by men like
William Cowper and
Charles Wesley, to traditional folk tunes to create hymns, many of which he published in the
English Hymnal. A different way in which this happened was the marriage of non-related words and tune, the best-known example being
The Star-Spangled Banner, the
national anthem of the
United States, with words written by
Francis Scott Key strictly as a poem, which was later set to the tune of an old drinking song.
Classical Music
In opera, the
librettist is responsible for all text, whether spoken or sung in
recitative or
aria.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Lyricist'.
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