8 Clichés in Lyrics

There are a myriad of clichés in lyrics. Some you can still get away with if you do it right, but some are definitely no-nos

It’s understandable why certain words/phrases/metaphors are widely used in lyrics. They are familiar; they click; they make the song seem “sophisticated”. Though they can be used aptly to moderate or even great effect, usually they add nothing substantive or seem trite and banal. Here are 4 clichés that can be utilized to great effect, and 4 others that should never be used.

1. Analogy between love and addiction

There are a lot of common metaphors and analogies used in song lyrics, but probably the most popular one is the love/addiction. Sometimes it appears unassumingly for one line, like in Rihanna’s “Diamonds”:

You’re a shooting star I see
A vision of ecstasy

Other times, it is the central theme of the song, like when Kesha wrote an entire song out of it (“Your Love Is My Drug”), or when Taylor Swift employed it to seem dark and edgy (“Don’t Blame Me”). While it’s rather innocuous, it has become boring, banal, and could be branded as lazy writing at this point, after decades of usage.

So how to improve this analogy? Don’t just compare love to drug/addiction, compare it to a specific one. Lorde did this on the second verse of “Writer In the Dark”:

I still feel you, now and then
Slow like pseudo-ephedrine

This is a brilliant simile: pseudo-ephedrine can be used as a stimulant/recreational drug—her love with her ex-boyfriend, but it is commonly used for allergies and cold or wakefulness-promoting agent—her trying to get over her ex-boyfriend. It also has a sustained release and take effect slowly—she is still thinking about the relationship.

Another example of using a specific drug is Frank Ocean’s “Novacane”, which tells a narrative of a girl making a living off doing porn while attending dental school. Here, the drug (novocaine—a numbing agent) is used to describe emotional numbness. In an interview with BBC Frank Ocean discussed the feeling he’s trying to convey: “Like, the feeling of somebody trying to love you, but you can’t feel it. Like, the feeling of wanting to feel something that you can’t feel.” And after his open letter about his love for a man in the past, we can’t help but wonder if this was a subtle reference to his sexuality.

2. Desperation

This one appears in two forms: overused phrases like “I’m on my knees” or “begging you please” (which usually go together because they rhyme), and ridiculous exaggerations. While it is quite harmless, speaking in extremes is unrealistic, phony, and can come off as immature. It also has toxic implications: don’t leave me else I will be/do this and that. One of the frequent offenders of this is Bruno Mars with songs like “Grenade” and “It Will Rain”—those overly and overtly sentimental ballads that clouds you with emotions so that you don’t really care what they’re saying. Speaking in extremes can also harm a song by conveying a simple idea in an unnecessarily convoluted way:

“There’ll be no clear skies
If I lose you, baby
Just like the clouds
My eyes will do the same if you walk away
Everyday, it will rain
Rain, rain”

What he’s trying to say here is that if he loses his lover, he’ll cry everyday.

I’d catch a grenade for ya
Throw my hand on a blade for ya
I’d jump in front of a train for ya
You know I’d do anything for ya
Ooh, I would go through all this pain
Take a bullet straight through my brain
Yes, I would die for ya, baby

What Bruno Mars is saying here, Chromatics needs only 4 words “I killed [myself] for love”. The problem with this cliché is that it’s usually too much: the narrator is desperate, and they will regurgitate that idea over again in multiple forms. Instead, in “Kill For Love”, Chromatics spend the verse and the hook narrating their story, before ending the hook with the line “I killed for love” and letting reality sink in. “Kill For Love” is structurally simple, but it has that one impactful line. And they put a twist on it too: instead of using present or future tense, they use past tense, and all the details from the rest of the song makes it even more real. Don’t do it more than once, and make it feel real. As always, show, not tell.

Another, albeit a lot harder, way to make it work is to incorporate it in magical realism, like Mitski did in “Happy”:

Oh if you’re going, take the train
So I can hear it rumble, one last rumble
And when you go, take this heart
I’ll make no more use of it when there’s no more you

In a world where happiness can take the form of a boy and have a one-night stand with you, surely it can take your heart as well. Even without that magical realism, the metaphor still makes the desperation works: a heart represents emotions, and if you don’t have happiness, do you really want emotions anymore?

3. Name-dropping

Name-dropping is not inherently bad, and usually works pretty well: “Moves Like Jagger” is the one Maroon 5 single this decade that is anywhere close to enjoyable. More positive examples include Ed Sheeran referencing Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” on “Castle On the Hill” or Lorde with Broken Social Scene’s “Lover’s Spit” on “Ribs”. However, there are a lot of songs that reference another song or artist just to leave you with confusion, rage, or even worse, disgust. Offset name-drops Britney Spears on “Motorsport” so briefly and succinctly that we’re not sure what he means. Even more recently, The Chainsmokers drops a new single titled “Beach House” that is inspired by, you guessed it, the dream pop band Beach House. The thing is, the narrative of the song has nothing to do with Beach House, neither does it sound even remotely like a Beach House track. In short, Beach House has been reduced to something less than a feeling, and The Chainsmokers only name-drop the band because it’s something vaguely hip and cool.

This one is rather easy to fix: only reference another song or artist to provide context, or to set up an atmosphere. An example of this is “Mr. Peterson”, where Perfume Genius makes a reference to the post-punk band Joy Division. The immensely successful and influential band is noted for its depressive, somber tone and lyrics, and the suicide of its lead singer and lyricist Ian Curtis at age 23. In “Mr. Peterson”, Mike Hadreas uses the reference as a brief glimpse into the eponymous Mr. Peterson:

He made me a tape of Joy Division
He told there was a part of him missing
When I was sixteen
He jumped off a building

This explains the ambiguity the narrator feels towards Mr. Peterson. Dealing with similar problems and being influenced by Joy Division himself, Hadreas can’t help but be sympathetic towards the titular character. But at the same time, Mr. Peterson is his sexual perpetrator. This ambiguity is conveyed the closing stanza:

Mister Peterson
I know you were ready to go
I hope there’s room for you up above
Or down below

4. Non-words

Using non-words in lyrics is so ubiquitous, even a sub group of it earned its own name: the millennial whoop. It is understandable why people use non-words so often: it is intuitive, and feels familiar. However, when use extensively in a song to fill up a sentence, or to replace actual lyrics (and usually with at least another cliché), it is lazy song writing. Though not as bad, another equally lazy use of non-words is to use it as the only hook in the song: it’s repetitive, catchy, sing-alongable and doesn’t take much effort. There is a plethora of examples, but worst offenders that come to mind are: Chris Brown’s “Turn Up the Music”, Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite”, Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” and “Roar”, Pitbull & Kesha’s “Timber”, One Direction’s “Live While We’re Young”, Imagine Dragon’s “Radioactive”.

Using non-words works really well, however, in songs with multiple hooks, each one equally catchy to another (which is admittedly quite rare). More importantly, the non-word hook must not be the peak of the song. Instead, it serves as the opening hook, and the climax of the song needs to have actual lyrics. Songs that manage to pull this off include Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” and Kylie Minogue’s dance-pop classic “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”. These songs are basically minefields with at least five hooks in their four to five minutes length.

Another way to make non-words work in a song is to fit them into the narrative of the lyrics and the melody (and not use it in the chorus). In “Cut To the Feeling”, Carly Rae Jepsen uses non-words in the pre-chorus:

I want some satisfaction, take me to the stars
Just like, “ahhh”
A-a-ahhh!

In such a theatrical song like “Cut To the Feeling”, when Jepsen sings the line, we can imagine her acting out the feelings that she can’t find the words for. Most importantly, the like works perfectly for the melody: Jepsen sings the non-word in an interval that mimics the echoing synth line that has been there since the beginning of the song: the feeling is there, and now she’s expressing it. Moreover, it connects the verse with the chorus: the verse is restrained, consisting solely of steps in the lower range of her voice, while the chorus shoots to the other end of her range and has a lot more movements in the melody. Melodically, the non-word “ahhh” sounds like a glittering staircase that brings her to a higher ground, connecting the two parts of the song.

5. YOLO

Okay, we’re now in the zone of unfixable mistakes. This cliché refers to songs that have the urgency of living in the “now”. This one is particularly bad because it usually goes with at least another cliché. Examples include using empty words such as “tonight” to fill up the sentence, in Pitbull ft. Afrojack, Ne-Yo, Neyer — “Give Me Everything”, or using non-words: One Direction — “Live While We’re Young”. They also usually incorporates another clichéd theme like “you can do anything”, the world is ending, partying, or sex, e.g. Enrique Iglesias ft. Ludacris and DJ Frank E — “Tonight (I’m Fuckin’ You)”, Madonna ft. JT & Timbaland — “4 Minutes”, Kylie Minogue — “Timebomb”, Kesha — “Tik Tok”.

6. Empty words

This category refers to lyrics with words so overused they add no meaning, or seem forced. This includes the ubiquitous “tonight”, “now”, “ya”, “baby”, “again”, “forever and ever”. Some of the cringiest lyrics also fall into this category since the word choice seems so weird out of place, usually due to forced rhyming. The uber-popular song “Hey, Soul Sister” has these cringy lyrics, trying to rhyme “obsessed” with “chest” and having to include “untrimmed” to fill up the words (later, it also references Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” for no purpose):

I’m so obsessed
My heart is bound to beat right out
My untrimmed chest

Another example is when The Chainsmokers try to seem cool by dropping an f-bomb while also trying to rhyme “pathetic” with “I said it” on “The One”, and the result is a meaningless couplet:

I know it’s pathetic
Fuck it, yeah, I said it

Another example is when two (or more) empty words are used only to rhyme with each other, such as “now”-“around”, like on Post Malone’s “Better Now”:

You prolly think that you are better now, better now
You only say that ’cause I’m not around, not around
You know I never meant to let you down, let you down

He speeds through the rest of the words and places so much emphasis on the rhymes to make it catchy that all you can hear is “blah blah, better now, better now, blah blah, not around, not around”.

7. Similes

Slightly better than empty words are the overused similes: “cold as ice”, “cuts like a knife”, “like a love song”, “falling like ashes”, “like fire”. They are boring, unoriginal, and unimaginative, but at least they are intuitive and natural. However, because they are easy, artists are also prone to use them with other clichés, or use them even though it feels forced. Songs like Alicia Keys’ “Girl On Fire” or P!nk’s “Just Like Fire” seems empowering until you stop for a moment and wonder what the simile actually means and realizes that the entire song is meaningless. Sometimes, a misplaced simile only ruins that atmosphere of the song, like in Troye Sivan’s “Bloom”, where the “play me like a love song” simile feels out of place and lazy amidst the flower and garden metaphor. Other times, it is so general that it doesn’t actually mean anything, like in Maroon 5’s “Girls Like You” (which also overuses non-words and empty words to fill up sentences):

’Cause girls like you run ‘round with guys like me

They are trying to make the song relatable to everyone: any guy can sing this line to any girl and it would work. Even the action described here is so unspecific it can be anything. Hard pass, please. It is like saying that Ditto is your favorite pokemon because it can turn into any pokemon.

8. You’re beautiful/perfect

This cliché is so positive and well-loved that gazillions of love songs are written out of it. But it is also the cheesiest, corniest, stalest, most predictable, most hackneyed, most banal thing out there. It is this cliché that constantly lands James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” on the list of the worst/most annoying songs ever written. However, everyone loves being told that they’re beautiful/perfect, and people need new cheesy and corny ballads for their weddings, so songs with this cliché keep churning out. From Shane Filan’s “Beautiful in White”, Bruno Mars’ “Just the Way You Are”, to Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect”. Even other versions of conveying your love to someone have been done to death/overplayed, like Bryan Adams’ “Everything I Do (I Do It For You)” or Celine Dion’s “My Hear Will Go On” and “The Power of Love”, so please stop trying to milk this dead cow.