Update: Online Song Lyric Generators
This post may be of interest to a small niche among writers, but if you are writing a script that involves someone who is a songwriter. Or…
This post may be of interest to a small niche among writers, but if you are writing a script that involves someone who is a songwriter. Or perhaps your story features a singer and you want to use original lyrics. Guess what I found? A bunch of online song lyric generators. Here are links to some of them:
Freestyle Song Lyrics Generator
WriterBot Song Lyrics Generator
And check this one out:
Alanis Morissette Random Lyric Generator
I’d recommend using these are starting points for inspiration, not simply for copy and pasting. Probably some legal concerns if you did that. Plus you’ll want to inject your own creativity. However, I thought these were worth noting for the record so you can bookmark them, just in case you ever have cause to write a script requiring original lyrics.
Update: I posted this originally in 2014. Recently, reader Eric Borgos kindly forwarded me two more online lyric generators:
This update sent me down the rabbit hole as I remembered a project I wrote back in the mid-90s called The Quiet Room. I’d read a Rolling Stone article about how big concert venues would set up rooms for parents of preadolescent metal heads to wait around for the evening’s festivities to end. While the kids were out in the arena banging around in the mosh pit, the parents could sit back, enjoy coffee and donuts, then drive their kids back home at concert’s end.
I thought that was a fun idea for a movie.
My writing partner and I worked up a pitch — basically American Graffiti meets Lollapalooza — set it up at TriStar Pictures. Part of the pitch was we would feature various fictional bands performing over the course of the concert. Since I had written songs since I was 14, the responsibility to write the lyrics fell to me. Here are some examples of song lyrics I wrote excerpted from the script The Quiet Room. The first one doesn’t need a setup.
Later on, who shows up to express his umbrage at the band backstage? None other than Don Knotts himself.
The next one also doesn’t need any setup either.
The final act was an homage to The Sex Pistols.
A lot of angry musicians! Finally, there’s a subplot between aspiring singer-songwriter Jill, an Alanis Morisette wannabe, and Dylan who another musician trying to break into the business.
And yes, challenged by Dylan, later on, Jill pens a song which is more authentic to who she is.
I just read the script. It’s really good. Yet another project lost to development hell. Sigh.
Anyhow, if you have a script involving original song lyrics, maybe the above linked lyric generators can provide a jumping off point for you.