Perspective and Time and Tense are three things to make sure you keep consistent through a song. Perspective is where you are ‘seeing’ the song from. Time is the logical flow of time through a song and tense is how you are referring to the event in a song.
Perspective
Going back to my old English classes I can remember when writing stories (and yes this applies to lyrics) it is recommended that you have to tell the one story from the same perspective throughout. You could try and confuse the listener (or reader of the lyric) by swapping perspective through a song. If you refer to yourself as ‘I’ in one line then in the second line make a statement as if you are looking at yourself from someone else’s perspective, ‘He’, it would confuse the listener and they might not understand what you are trying to portray in the song. That is why it’s best to keep the same perspective.
The two types of perspective:
First Person
In this perspective, the writer/performer is telling the story through their eyes. Describing what they see and they are doing, for example “I work up this morning and got out of bed”.
Third Person
This perspective, the writer/performer is telling the story by standing on the outside and looking at the situation as if you are observing someone else and telling the listener about them. For example, “He woke up this morning and got out of bed”
It would be possible to write the same song in a ‘First Person’ and ‘Third Person’ perspective and get the same message across. It might just sound better in one perspective than the other. But try and keep the same perspective through the song.
As with all guide lines / rules (as some call them) in songwriting they are meant to be broken. For example in the “Long Road Out of Eden” track off the last Eagles album with the same name, the perspective of the song changes 1/2 way through. All the verses are in Third person with the bridge of the piece being in first person perspective. What this does is set’s up and draws the situation for the listener so they know where they are at. The first person perspective in the bridge then let the listener see through the eyes of one of the soldiers who is on the battle line and the pain he’s going through. Also note, in being the bridge of the song, there is a musical interlude before and a solo after it, giving it its own section of the song.
Another way the rules could be broken would be with a duet, for example
“I work up this morning and I got out of bed” – myself
“He didn’t know it but he woke me up” – duet partner (in this situation would be my wife 😉 ).
Time
What do you do when you get out of bed? One possible scenario:
- Make a cup of coffee and cook and butter up some toast.
- Have a shower and get dressed for work
- Head out of the house and down the road to catch a bus to work.
- Get to work and start the working day.
Now if we tell that out of order:
- I had a shower this morning.
- Oh before it I ate some toast and a coffee which I made
- Then I headed to work…. after I got dressed of course
- Then I got to work and started the working day.
Now between the two examples the first one tells the events of my morning in a chronological order, the second is all over the place. Which was easier to understand from start to finish? The first one? That was just a morning with pretty simple events. What if you were writing a song and each verse was about a year of your life. What if you got them out of order? The first verse you are single, the second verse you have a child and the third verse you meet the love of your life who you are going to have kids with (no granted that is possible, but let’s play a non ‘soap opera’ yet ‘perfect’ world). That is why keeping the correct time line in songs is important.
I saw the video for an Alanis Morissette song ‘Hands Clean’ once about 6 years ago. I looked up the name of the song for this article by googling its’ hook which I had remembered, which turns out to be a great way to step through time in a song. The verses tell the story of a specific time and then you are propelled forward through the chorus with the line “We’ll fast forward to a few years later”.
Another good example of time in song would be ‘100 Years’ by Five for Fighting. For the first few verses it starts out “I’m <insert progressive age> for a moment”. A great way to tell the listener at what time you are referring to, in this case the age of a person in their entire life of 100 years.
Tense
Tense is linked to time by the way you are referring to events, whether they be in past, present or future tense. There is a wikipedia page which delves much more deeply in to the ‘perfect’ tenses as such. But I’ll just talk about the basics.
Let’s take a famous quote from Julius Caesar, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” (Veni, vidi, vici.) It is in past tense as it has already happened. Present tense might change that quote to “I’m here, I’m seeing this, and I am taking over”. Future tense would make it “I’m coming, I’ll check it out, and I will conquer it”.
From the above examples you can write an entire song in the past tense and rewrite it in the present tense and rewrite it once again in future tense. Again, some might sound better than the other. It can also change during a song. Just make sure like with time you have it in the correct order, you don’t want to be there (present tense) and then in the next verse be talking about travelling there (past).
Granted this guideline/rule is begging to be broken!