With the careers of Flight of the Conchords, Tenacious D, The Lonely Island, Bo Burnham, and others, the comedy-music subgenre is continually expanding and reinventing itself. If you are looking to try out writing a comedy song for yourself, you’re in the right place. Let’s get started!
Author’s note: This article refers specifically to guidance around comedy songs. If you’re looking for more general song guidance that will still apply here, check out the article Writing Your First Song.
Premise
The nice thing about a comedy song is that, foundationally, a comedy song revolves around one joke, or premise. Through the song you’re going to tell that joke many different ways, but really the premise remains central throughout.
For example, if the joke of your song is that all politicians are bad, you’re going to spend your whole song on that one premise, showing the audience a bunch of different ways that your joke is true.
Form
The form of a song at its most basic aligns with the following:
Verse
Chorus
Verse
Chorus
Bridge
Chorus*
In a traditional four-line verse, your job as a writer is very simple, you’re going to give the audience several examples of your premise, landing at least two jokes in the following fashion:
Setup 1
Punchline 1
Setup 2
Punchline 2
In the chorus of your song, you really want to have at least one line that is catchy and repeated in every chorus. Ideally, this repeated line will exemplify the point of view of your song. The rest of your chorus you may use however you wish. One of my favorite tactics is to always repeat that catchy line, but to also sneak in another joke in the chorus, but make small adjustments to that joke every time you repeat the chorus.
In the bridge, you want to either take your premise into the stratosphere, or you want to write a “but” bridge, where you challenge your own point of view. Said another way, you really want to take your premise to the most ridiculous place you can, or point out the ridiculousness of your premise.
Either way, when you enter your final chorus*, something about it should change lyrically to reflect the new information that we have received from the bridge, and that change can be whatever makes the most sense to you.
Rhyming
Many new writers are intimidated by the idea of making sure that they are adhering to a consistent rhyme scheme throughout a song, even though they may not be aware of the formal term. A rhyme scheme is the pattern in which each individual paragraph (also called a stanza) rhymes. For example, in a four line stanza, your pattern may be ABAB, where the first and third, and second and fourth lines rhyme with each other, or ABCB, in which only the second and fourth lines rhyme.
Even though many writers worry about this, many popular songs adhere to only a limited rhyme scheme or none at all! So as you’re creating your lyrics, don’t be too worried if everything doesn’t rhyme immediately, you can still justify things melodically to create a song that flows well.
Way to go! Now, if you’re already humming a tune in your head, click on over to Composing Your First Song and get your new comedy song ready for your first open mic night!