When we write songs, it’s important to realize that how we sing our lines affects the message we’re delivering. The words we stress in a phrase when we sing a lyric can CHANGE the meaning of the lyric from what we intended to something totally different. This can come into play especially when we are trying to deliver an ambiguous message that has more than one meaning. How we deliver the message can make or break our ambiguity.

As an example, let’s look at the third verse of the song, “Use Somebody,” by Kings of Leon.

Verse three:

Out of the night while you live it up, I’m going to sleep

Making wars to shake the poet and the rhythm

I hope it’s gonna make you notice

I hope it’s gonna make you notice

Someone like me

Someone like me

The phrase “Someone like me” has ambiguous tones. What is implied in the preceding lines is “someone who is like me… someone like me”. Or less subtly, “I”.

That’s the main meaning here, BUT it can also mean: “SOMEONE please thank me or love me. Please someone, anyone, like me for who I am.” You see it? It is a different meaning than the first one I mentioned.

So the letter progression could be saying this:

(I have capitalized the words requiring emphasis)

1. I hope it gets you noticed

2. Someone like ME

3. Someone LIKE me…

Or, in other words, you could be saying is:

1. I hope it gets you noticed

2. I

3. Will no one like me?

Emphasis

So you see that this letter has two potential meanings. But one thing to add to this is that the words you stress in lyrical phrases will affect what you’re saying. To use the example above, saying “Someone like ME” means something different than “Someone like me.”

The idea here is that if you change the stressed words in a sentence, you can affect the meaning of the sentence. In the song “Use Somebody”, when they sing the line “someone like ME”, they stress the word “me”. Go listen to it. It’s around 2:20 on the track. You can check it on YouTube.

Do you hear that? The way he sings forces our brains to think about the meaning of line #2, above.

In other words, although the line is most likely ambiguous, when Kings of Leon highlights the word “I”, it forces us to think about the meaning of “someone who is like I am” or simply “I”. “If they had accentuated the word ‘I like’, it would have taken on the second meaning of ‘won’t anyone like me?’

So it can be difficult to consider this line ambiguous, because of how we hear it. While the written line has two meanings, the sung (or spoken) version takes on only one of those meanings, depending on how you sing (or say) it. In this case, we are forced to HEAR only one meaning (“Someone like ME”), when on a piece of paper, it can be READ as two things (“Someone like ME” or “Someone LIKE me”).

We didn’t have this problem with the ambiguity of the phrase “You know I can use someone”, because in both possible meanings of THAT phrase (1. using someone physically or 2. depending on someone and needing someone), the accents are the SAME. That is a problem. Because in that case, it works. No problem, as long as your lyrics are well written to support and reinforce the idea.

So, as songwriters, not only do we have the hurdle of trying to create some ambiguous phrases in our lyrics, but now we have to make sure that BOTH meanings of these phrases have the same proper stress, so that the meaning can stay ambiguous! Oh man, this is getting complicated!

test it

What I’m talking about here is somewhat advanced, since it’s really a combination of two topics. The first theme is writing clever and ambiguous lines, and the second theme is that the words you stress in your song affect what you’re saying.

In previous articles, I’ve talked about how stressing certain words can make a phrase sound unnatural, but here you’ll see that stressing different words can CHANGE the meaning of the phrase you’re singing from one meaning to another. one. Powerful stuff. As always, I advise you to experiment with this and use it accordingly. I look forward to hearing what you come up with.