My 2nd verse curse...

[Mark Kaufman]

I remember Couchgrouch commenting once about how second verses seem to be the downfall of most lyrics.I don't have any suggestions other than to write really good second verses.Well...yes I do. Go crazy and write about 19 verses. Don't hold back, just go and go, write horrible ones, good ones, unrelated ones, whatever. Somewhere inside that mess of verses will be something to keep, after distillation.

[boyatheart]

I often move verses around after I have written the song, so sometimes my verse 1 becomes verse 2 etc... However buying into a notion that you are cursed to write a good 2nd verse is the main cause. Because you have unintentionally grown a belief that you can't write a good 2nd verse, you will pick more holes in it than the first because you expect it to be not good enough.It is very likely that others may love your 2nd verses. I didn't even write any lyrics for years because I just believed that I wasn't any good at it until I decided to simply ignore that belief. Now it's possible my lyrics could still be terrible, but I have stopped caring so much, which allows me to actually write and for the most part I get very good feedback from my songs.The songs you write for fun are easy for you because you don't care so much about them and so if people do tell you the lyrics are silly or whatever, well you can tell them. "Yes that's the point. It's not a serious song". The serious ones are important to you and you have a certain abount of your identity invested in them, so of course you want them to be as good as they possibly can.I would see if you can alter your perspective of your"serious" songs and let go of the attachment to whether they are any good or not because one thing is guaranteed. There will always be someone who won't like a song, but if that someone is you then it might as well be not liked by anybody.I'm sorry if this sounds condescending. Definitely not my intention. I am just talking from experience. Caring less is what enabled me to be happy with my songwriting (I still aim to improve) and it also means that I feel ok about rewrites too if I have a flash of inspiration.Just don't give up and stop believing in curses! Anyone...please feel free to put me in my place though

[devin]

Dec 7, 2008, 6:02pm, boyatheart wrote:Anyone...please feel free to put me in my place though I respect ya too much to discount any advice given. I also respect everyone else's abilities on this forum, (and my own potential as well)...there's too many good songs to be written to waste time by taking offense to any advice given!I'm going to follow Tim W's suggestion and post a link and lyric to one of my long-term songs....as soon as I get home and rip one to mp3.

[bigbluebarry]

I was also going to suggest the "make your 1st verse your second verse" tip but since that's already been done I'll offer up something else. While at the Rally this year, I had a chance to meet Pat Pattison during one of the Mentor lunches. He shared a great tip with our table. Come up with one lyric line to start with. His example "Love life and it will love you back." Now, take one word out of that line and start a new line with it, but this line will not be related to the other one. So he took the word "life" and came up with something like "Life sucks but it could be worse." (I cant' remember what his exact phrase was but that's not important)Now, do that again with your second line. Maybe take the word "could" and come up with a line "Could I borrow some sugar?" or whatever makes you happy. Repeat this process about 25-30 times and then go back and look at all the lines you have and pick out the best 4 or 5 and go from there.Hope that helps!- Big Blue

[Mark Kaufman]

I know--don't write second verses...just skip to the third.

[devin]

Dec 10, 2008, 4:30pm, lyle wrote:I know--don't write second verses...just skip to the third.Seeing as I've only had instrumental forwards for the songs I've written, I think I can even shorten that part of the process Mark!I'm not giving up on the lyrics though...gotta get that complete song through some day. Thanks again all!

[updnmusic]

a cure for the 2nd verse curse is like the cure for hiccups. They all seem to work great until you have hiccups. i tried this and it seemed to work...actually i was dreaming, and the realization came then in my dream i was instructed to give it to my subconscious mind. don't think about it too actively, realize what needs changing, set the stage like maybe with your rhyme scheme or rhythm, your themes, etc., and then let your subconscious do the writing, it might come in a dream, or maybe a flash, or something clever you say to a friend. sometimes we work so hard to get it all right on the first go, we overwork the dough... but the subconscious is such fertile soil for the food of thought. don't just let it simmer, let it get yeasty, edit it later, then stick it in the pan. Also sometimes we get stuck for a reason. so we can chance upon that elegant solution to the dilemma... and to today i had this gem of a realization why do we say it was like "a light went off in my head" ? doesn't the light come on? language is weird man.

[mirabeam]

Hi there,As the lyricist for Mirabeam, I must admit I do sometimes find the 2nd verse much harder than the 1st. Though sometimes, it is actually the other way round, and I find myself writing a great 2nd verse, and then having to go back to the 1st verse at a later stage to re-write the lyrics and change some parts of the melody.I'm sure most of you find that if you spend too long trying to force a lyric etc, it just will not happen. I have found that if you leave the song to one side, and go away and write another song, or listen to some music, and then go back to the troublesome 2nd verse a few hours, or even a few days later, you will have more inspiration, and your thoughts will be fresher.Hope this helps:)Nathalie (Mirabeam)