Lyric Writing Tools #2: Parallelism

It’s day 2 of our Week of Lyric Writing Tools. This time, we’re going to look at utilizing parallelism in lyrics.  

Parallelism

You have to love some good parallelism. Star Wars has made plenty of use of parallels. 

Both Luke and Anakin lose their hands.

Both (as well as Rey) come from small beginnings on a desolate desert planet.

And both of them have their temptation scene with Darth Sidious seated in a metal chair with space behind him. In both, the young Jedi is tempted to kill the sith apprentice. Anakin makes the wrong choice and does, while Luke does the right thing and takes mercy. 

There are plenty of other examples, but take a look at those two clips and you will see the obvious parallel. 

We can do the same thing with our songs. A great example of parallelism in a song is Fast Car by Tracy Chapman. 

The song revolves around the idea of escaping to a better life- something the fast car is symbolic of. Early in the song she wants to escape her life where she works a low-paying job, having to take care of her alcoholic father who’s “body is too old for working”.

Because of his alcoholism and lack of job, her mother left him, so the writer is left to take care of him.

You see my old man’s got a problem

He live with the bottle that’s the way it is

He says his body’s too old for working

I say his body’s too young to look like his

My mama went off and left him

She wanted more from life than he could give

I said somebody’s got to take care of him

So I quit school and that’s what I did

As the song progresses, the owner of the fast car is revealed to still not have a job, though they planned to both get jobs and move to the city. By the end of the song, she’s telling him to leave, as he is a jobless alcoholic like her father.

You got a fast car

And I got a job that pays all our bills

You stay out drinking late at the bar

See more of your friends than you do of your kids

I’d always hoped for better

Thought maybe together you and me’d find it

I got no plans I ain’t going nowhere

So take your fast car and keep on driving

There are a bunch of layers of tragedy here, but the main one is that her hope the whole time- the fast car- ends up being a false hope that lets her down. The owner of the fast car turns out to parallel her father. 

He might even be worse, as he also spends more time with his friends than their kids. 

This parallel she draws adds tremendous depth to the tragedy of the song. Many years later, long after she had to quit school to take care of her dad, she is still in the same place. 

She’s still the one paying the bills, and she’s still taking care of an alcoholic who doesn’t pull their own weight. 

And this isn’t really any fault of her own. She worked to escape that life, even having multiple jobs to do so. But she ends in the same place, despite all her efforts to escape in that fast car. 

Another example of parallelism is my song Flightless. The song is sung from the perspective of an old man (I may be frail and old) who hears only one birdsong as winter approaches. 

He figures out the bird couldn’t fly south due to a broken wing and sets out to fix him. The first chorus goes like this: 

You see this bird has a broken wing

And forgets his troubles with song

Though he’s left to winter alone

And he knows he won’t last long

The end of the second verse begins to draw the parallel:

See he might have family

Or he might be all alone

But every life’s a gift

From his to my own

And then the parallel is really brought home in the second chorus:

I know the ache of a lonely heart

That cheers itself with song

Clinging to a restless world

Where burdens don’t last long

The old man, like the bird he is trying to save, is flightless. The bird was left behind by a restless world, as was the old man. They both likely won’t “last long”. The old man feels the world sees him as a burden, and he doesn’t want the bird to have the same fate as himself. 

Because of the parallel drawn here, you can learn a lot about the old man, how he feels about the world, how he thinks the world sees him, and how he values life vs how the world does via how he treats and speaks to the bird.

Parallels can be a great way to add depth to a song. They allow you to compare, contrast, and illuminate the message further. Try using some parallelism in your next song!