Song lyrics. Some are great. Some are bad. But what makes a song sell? If you look closely, you will start to see a pattern but if you look too close, you'll miss it. You also need to understand that it's a bit like food. Some food is more popular than others but that doesn't make it better, just popular. It's highly subjective.

By far the lyrics that sell the most are lyrics about relationships, love and/or sex. Love gained, lost, found, missed, gone, whatever. This is because the majority of music buyers are teenagers and they can relate to these lyrics. They even sometimes believe the song was written just for them. The other kind of lyrics that sell well are "feel good" lyrics; "Don't Worry, Be Happy", "What A Wonderful World", "Somewhere Over The Rainbow". Another popular type of song lyric is found in kids songs. While most adults aren't aware of it, children's music is huge.

Here is an incomplete list of other types of lyrics. I say incomplete because there really is no end to lyric subject matter, it's just that some are more popular than others.

Feeling Bad lyrics (the Blues)
Drinking lyrics (Whiskey River)
Nature lyrics (Singin' in the Rain)
Anti-something (protest) lyrics (Masters of War)
Patriotic Songs (Yankee Doodle)
Working lyrics (Workin' 9 to 5)
Pet lyrics (Puff the Magic Dragon)
Money lyrics (Money. That's What I want)
Family lyrics (We Are Family)
Poetic lyrics (almost anything by Bob Dylan)
Historic/Event lyrics (The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down)
Bad Habits (Smoke That Cigarette)

But what is the magic to a successful song lyric? What makes one song click and the other flop? Keep reading.

What is a lyric? Most people will say it's a song. But when read aloud, without musical accompaniment, it's really a poem. Poems set to music is a song. Lyric writing can be thought of as a type of poem where there are no strict rules and rhyming is not necessarily required.

TECHNICALLY SPEAKING

But to focus on what makes a lyric marketable, you have to consider some elements that are proven successful. What follows is a typical example of a song lyric. Try to think of it in a linear fashion that is like this:

A A B A A B C A B
intro- verse - verse - chorus - verse - verse - chorus - bridge/solo - verse - chorus - ending
Songwriter and musicians often refer to these parts in a song like:

intro A A B A A B C A B ending

Intro:
Sets up the song (sometimes

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