Successful Lyric Writing by Sheila Davis

I thought I'd add some posts looking at the books in my own collection, offering my opinion on each book.

Successful Lyric Writing by Sheila Davis

This is an excellent book for those fairly new to serious lyrics writing. Covering the broad strokes of lyrics writing including theory, principles and common song forms Sheila's book provides a good foundation for those wanting to move from writing from the hip to an increased awareness of what the hell is going on when they write, why one song works better than another and so on.

As a workbook it also contains lots of examples and exercises to work through plus a useful set of definitions and explanations.

There are no rules in songwriting, guidelines yes, but songwriters frequently ignore those guidelines. Where books like this fit into the equation is in helping aspiring songwriters to understand what they trade off when making decisions about song lyrics. Making informed choices is a powerful thing.

Overall I found it an interesting book, a useful reference and definitely a handy book to have in your collection.