The Importance of Lyrics (The Verses) to and in Songs!!!
How important are the lyrics, anyway? This is a question that many would ask. I would say, lyrics add value to a song or sometimes takes it away. The lyrics contain your story. It is where you expound upon what your song is saying, and expand upon the statement, theme, idea, housed within your chorus/hook.
So, do you need strong lyrics and verses? Well, if you have a powerfully magnetic, and infectiously catchy chorus and-or hook, you can have a hit song with mediocre lyrics. But I relate it to you this way. Think of a song in terms of a movie the chorus/hook is like the trailer. It has great, memorable, attention-grabbing content, that makes you go I need to see this movie, but if those scenes are basically, the only really good parts of the movie, yes, you might count those as classic scenes and might like the movie, because of them, but that does not make for a classic movie, but if the overall content of the movie is good it shoots the movie into another stratosphere, and in songs most of your content is found in the verses (lyrics) .
Now, we all know movies, that we can quote certain scenes of, but it's just another movie to us, among many blockbusters. Those scenes are great, but you don't consider that movie one of the absolute classics or greatest movies, of all time. Just as a movie that makes a powerful imprint on you needs great overall content and a good, solid script, so does a good/great song need great overall content and good, solid, lyrics, and as you can't have good overall content, without a good script in a movie, you can't have good overall content, in a song without good lyrics and strong verses. Now, that content doesn't have to be the most poetic or Pulitzer Prize-winning, it just has to fit and mesh with your song and support the overall theme, statement, idea, found within. Your lyrics can be really simple, but if they fit and work with your song, they fit and work with your song. Nobody's looking for Shakespeare, just lyrics that are effective in and add something, to the song.
Now, overall, the music, melody, chorus, and hook are really important. The music drives and guides the emotion of your song and can take your listener on quite a ride, but if you also add the proper accompanying lyrics, it deepens all of that and further engages your listener. The melody is the tune (essential rhythm) of the song, that part that gets us humming and sets the tone for the overall song, but it doesn't really say anything and can't deliver your message or carry your story, by itself. You need lyrics to do that. Now, the chorus/hook are usually the most memorable and catchy part of your song, and contain your essential subject (message), but it just the gist (overview), of what's being said, (put forth), and it needs to be expanded upon, to really engage your audience (listener) and you do that with your lyrics and in the verses,
You can have a hit song without good and suitable lyrical content, appropriate for your song, just as you can have a hit movie without a quality script, but if you want an extraordinary song or movie, you need quality content to keep the audience engaged and not only a few memorable moments, stirring music, and well-paced mood setters, if you can forget most everything about a song or movie, except for a few well-crafted parts, how powerful, impactful, or memorable is it, really!!! The importance of lyrics, the verses, is what they can do to and for your song, how they can help your song realize its full potential and tell your listener exactly what you're trying to say, get across.
