Write A Tattoo Lyric

Tattoo lyric? What on this honestly-more-blue-than-green earth is that? Do you mean a lyric tattoo?

I can see why you would think that, but no.

A tattoo lyric is a concept I came up with in order to add another “rule” to keep increasing the quality of my lyrics. 

So, if you’re looking for a way to get your songs to stand out more, or if you’re on a holy quest to become a better lyricist (in which case, we can be friends), this is a post for you.

What Is A Tattoo Lyric?

A tattoo lyric, in its simplest sense, is a phrase, line, or set of lines that stand out enough to be worthy of someone tattooing on their body. 

Let’s dive into what that actually looks like.

First, it is always a lyric that stands on its own. It’s not a lyric that needs context. You shouldn’t need to know the lyrics that come before or after it for the lyric to make sense. 

For example “You belong somewhere you feel free”. That seems like it could be an inspirational quote, it is so context agnostic. 

But it’s a line from the Tom Petty song “Wildflowers”. Whatever the lyrics before or after that are, it doesn’t really affect the meaning of this specific line. 

A person could tattoo that on their body because they deeply believe that everyone deserves to be somewhere that they feel free to be themselves. 

Ideally, your tattoo lyric is dripping with meaning. 

The more profound the line, the better tattoo lyric it is. Because a tattoo lyric is also something very quotable. 

This usually involves being a mixture of memorable and profound.

Why Write A Tattoo Lyric?

I think there are 3 major benefits to writing a tattoo lyric.

The first major benefit of making sure your song has a tattoo lyric is fairly obvious. 

It guarantees there will be at least one memorable thing in your song. 

If you make an active effort to make one specific line stand out from the rest, it raises the possibility that one line actually does stand out from the rest, right?

If you actively work at the aim of your soccer shots when practicing in your backyard, you’ll probably get better at aiming your shots, right? 

When you practice piano, making a point to practice the E major scale will make you better at the E major scale, right? It seems obvious, but it’s the same concept. If you set a standard to work towards something specific, the chance of that actually happening is much greater.

Otherwise you could go all the way through a song, have a bunch of non-memorable, ok-at-best lyrics and end up with a song with nothing to offer. 

Mediocrity isn’t memorable.

Even being really good across the board often doesn’t stand out next to something average across the board with something elite in it.

The second major benefit is that it forces you to start looking at your lyric quality at the micro level. 

I get it, we tend to look at the macro level for things. You watch a mostly-boring football game that gets exciting in the end and say “what an exciting game!”, forgetting that the first 3 ½ quarters you were questioning exactly how much you like football.

You don’t know how you feel about a book until the ending blows your mind; Up until the 3rd to last page, you thought you might not like the book at all, but then the ending retroactively changes your opinion of the whole book.

And, if your song lyrics look “good overall” you might be willing to overlook how average and uncompelling your second verse is. 

But that’s not the right attitude. You should want to crush it with every single line. 

Let’s do some basic math. On average, a song is 2 verses, a chorus, and a bridge. Then let’s assume that every one of those sections have 8 lines.

So, we’re looking at 4 sections x 8 lines each = 32 lines per song. 

Now, let’s assume you release a full-length album with 12 songs on it every 2 years. Which is honestly fairly aggressive, even for full-time artists. Most of my favorite artists are more like 10 song albums every 3-4 years.

So 12 songs every 2 years = 6 songs per year. 6 songs per year x 32 lines per song = 192 lines per year. 

So, assuming a release schedule more aggressive than the average professional artist, you would still be writing fewer than 200 lines per year. 

That’s about ½ of a line a day.

So there is NO good reason to have a lazily-written line, much less a whole section. 

The song as a whole is undoubtedly important, but the best way to increase the quality of the whole is to increase the quality of the parts. 

It’s pretty hard to build a quality car with crap parts.

It’s pretty hard to build a good team with crappy players. 

Similarly, it’s pretty hard to build a good song with crap lines.

And it’s pretty hard to build a great song with average lines. 

For the absolute best method to get the most out of every lyric you write, check out this post on my iterative lyric writing process. 

The third major benefit of writing a tattoo lyric is that it implicitly raises the lyric standard for your song. 

You might look like a pretty great soccer player when you’re the top scorer for your intramural team. But when Ronaldo takes the field, you start to look like a total chump, right?

The reality is that most things are very relative. I’d consider myself a “good” athlete amongst my friends overall. I was generally good enough to do some high school sports. But, put me against a college player? Even a high-end high school player? 

I don’t look very good any more. Imagine what I’d look like next to a pro. But we also tell players paid millions of dollars to play sports at the highest level how much they suck when they are getting destroyed by the other person paid millions of dollars to play a sport.

Similarly, your average lyrics might be silent song-killers when they’re all average together. Once you make sure one line is great? Now the two lines next to it look like they need improvement. Then the lines next to those look like they need improvement.

Now your first verse is killer. All of a sudden that second verse really needs to be changed. 

Soon your entire song has gotten better because you took the time to make one line raise the standard. 

That one line “broke the curve”, making it so all the lines who got C’s actually got C’s, rather than them being told they were good enough because the curve brought them up to A’s. 

How To Write A Tattoo Lyric

I believe there are 5 main factors in creating a tattoo lyric.

The first we’ve talked about- it doesn’t need context; It’s a line that can stand on its own. 

The second and third factors are that it has to say something meaningful and relatable. 

There probably aren’t too many people putting Nicki Minaj lyrics on their arms. I hope.

It should say something that could be deeply impactful to someone. Talking about how drunk you got last night isn’t meaningful. Talking about her beautiful jet-black hair isn’t particularly meaningful either.

Dropping a line that philosophises about what love is or why it’s so hard?

That’s probably going to be meaningful.

A tattoo lyric must also be something they relate to and feel is a part of their core being. 

It can even be something simple that hits them hard and rings true for them. 

Even if a Nicki Minaj lyric rings true for you, you probably wouldn’t want to admit it. And I certainly hope not enough to put it on your body permanently. 

The fourth factor in creating a tattoo lyric is to write a lyric that finds a new way to say something very human. 

“Love isn’t easy” is very true. But it’s not new. If you’re above the age of 5, you’ve heard that before. 

But something like “I wish it didn’t crush me to look into the eyes I love” is at least a more creative or “new” way to say that. I’m sure that’s been said before, so it isn’t actually new, because nothing is new under the sun, but it’s at least a more compelling and fresh take on an old concept.

It is a powerful image rather than a boring statement of an obvious truth. 

Lastly, a tattoo lyric is timeless.

So no pop culture references that will be irrelevant in 10 years. Looking at you, “And the Jay Z song was on” (“Party In The U.S.A.” by Miley Cyrus).

No text lingo. “Thank u, next” – It’s funny, the title is exactly how I feel about the song.

In general, no pop song garbage. No pointless bragging about your sexcapades. No bragging about money. No trash lyrics that aren’t deep at all but pretend to be (See: “Grenade” by Bruno Mars). In general, if the artist is someone who could be appropriately called a “pop star” they probably aren’t a model to follow in the lyric department.