Songwriting for Dummies #3: Mixing Metaphors

Have you ever listened to a song and the lyrics didn’t quite seem to match up?

Well, I have had this song that I’ve been working on for a very long time. The trouble is that I have a line in the chorus that goes: ‘You rain down your glory, you shine on everyone.’ Obviously I have mixed my metaphors, and it talks about rain and sunshine in the same song. Maybe it would work if my next line was about rainbows, or if my song was about a typical Vancouver weather forecast… In the context of my song, however, it doesn’t work. Problem is, I can’t seem to decide if I want to use rain metaphors through my song, or sunshine metaphors throughout. So several years later, I still haven’t resolved the conflicting metaphors in this line.

It’s amazing how often little lyrical discrepancies find their way into a song, whether it is someone singing the first rendition of a song they just wrote, or whether it is a song that has made it on the radio. Unfortunately, as soon as you recognize it, it distracts from the song, and all you can focus on is the awkward lyrics.

Lyrics obviously rely heavily on lyrical tricks such as metaphors to get the mesage across. As songwriters, however, we need to be sure that the metaphors we use fit with the rest of the song.

Having said that, sometimes mixed metaphors can be used for comic relief. Good country and folk writers often use mixed metaphors for comic effect, or to get their point across. Or even better, they use the metaphor out of context so it purposely stands out, or carries more than one meaning. I admire these writers who can use a phrase in more than one context. As a listener, I look forward to every time the metaphor is used, as I look forward to discovering what context it is going to be used in next. A lot of the folk songs from the folk revival in the ’60s used this technique, and since the songs were written in a stanza format (with repeated verses, instead of the verse-chorus-verse-chorus format that is regularly used now), a repeated phrase or metaphor in each stanza punched home the message of the song.

So as songwriters, w need to be careful of our use of metaphors. Where they conflict with each other, let’s make sure it is intentional. Otherwise, it will distract from the song, and the message will get lost on account of one distracting phrase.

In the meantime, I will keep working on my song, and hopefully decide whether my song is going to be about rain or sunshine. As long as it gets resolved before I ever sing it in public; otherwise half the audience will be pulling out umbrellas, and the other half will be putting on sunglasses…