{"id":11336,"date":"2022-01-22T05:00:22","date_gmt":"2022-01-22T10:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.judypenzsheluk.com\/?p=11336"},"modified":"2022-01-18T10:21:05","modified_gmt":"2022-01-18T15:21:05","slug":"lets-talk-about-writing-using-lyrics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.judypenzsheluk.com\/2022\/01\/22\/lets-talk-about-writing-using-lyrics\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s Talk About Writing: Using Lyrics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"11340\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.judypenzsheluk.com\/2022\/01\/22\/lets-talk-about-writing-using-lyrics\/colorful-music-notes-vector-27766584\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.judypenzsheluk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/colorful-music-notes-vector-27766584-e1642519085234.jpg?fit=901%2C963&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"901,963\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}\" data-image-title=\"colorful-music-notes-vector-27766584\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.judypenzsheluk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/colorful-music-notes-vector-27766584-e1642519085234.jpg?fit=281%2C300&ssl=1\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.judypenzsheluk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/colorful-music-notes-vector-27766584-e1642519085234.jpg?fit=855%2C1024&ssl=1\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-11340\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.judypenzsheluk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/colorful-music-notes-vector-27766584-e1642519085234-281x300.jpg?resize=281%2C300\" alt=\"\" width=\"281\" height=\"300\" \/>Yes, I know, Stephen King makes it look so easy with his habit of using song lyrics in his novels. But here’s a head’s up: He’s a bestselling author, so most musicians are going to be more than okay with granting permission. And he’s got money, and plenty of it, if he needs to pony up some cash. Odds are if you’re reading this you don’t fall under either category. I know I don’t.<\/p>\n<p>So…can you quote song lyrics in your novel or short story? The short answer is “No.”\u00a0Song lyrics are copyrighted. Quoting any copyrighted material requires permission, though there is something called the “fair use” clause. Now, for a 85,000-word novel, quoting a sentence or two likely falls under “fair use.” For music, however, where the entire piece is a few verses long, the prevailing wisdom is that you will need permission from the publisher to quote as little as a single line. Even attribution of the lyric and copyright to the songwriter\/artist is not enough. And we live in an increasingly litigious society.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, there are exceptions. If a song is in the public domain, then copyright law no longer applies. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pdinfo.com\/public-domain-music-list.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Here’s a handy dandy list of songs in the public domain as of Jan. 1, 2022.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Another exception would be common expressions used in lyrics. For example, if a song included the lyric, “People like him are a dime a dozen,” and you wrote something like, “Joey was like that song, TITLE, where people like him were a dime a dozen,” you should be okay, because that’s a common expression, not something unique to the author.\u00a0You can also mention any song title without fear of reprisal, because titles, whether a book, movie, or song, cannot be copyrighted.<\/p>\n<p>You can also imply a song lyric. I’ll use my story, “Goulaigans,” which appears in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B088ZGF18Y\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Heartbreaks & Half-truths <\/em><\/a>as an example. The story is set in much fictionalized Goulais River, a small town in northern Ontario on the shores of Lake Superior.\u00a0Here’s a snippet of the dialogue (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=PH0K6ojmGZA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">and if you’re unfamiliar, or just want a reminder, here’s a link to Lightfoot’s song<\/a>).<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Laura\u2019s body washed up on shore three days later, about a mile from the old Donaldson place.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhatever happened to Superior not giving up its dead?\u201d Tucker asked me. We were sitting in my cabin, sipping on twelve-year-old whiskey. Now that Laura was gone, we could be friends again. Or at least pretend to be.<\/p>\n<p>My mind replayed the lyrics to the Gordon Lightfoot song, <i>The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald<\/i>. It was a favourite on the radio up here, seeing how the <i>Fitzgerald<\/i> sank in 1975, not ten miles from Whitefish Bay.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think that\u2019s only in November,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s August\u2026there was no fella with a beard, was there?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And on that note (clever, don’t you think, the musical reference?), I’ll sign off.<\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, I know, Stephen King makes it look so easy with his habit of using song lyrics in his novels. But here’s a head’s up: He’s a bestselling author, so most musicians are going to be more than okay with granting permission. And he’s got money, and plenty of it, if he needs to pony […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[856,33],"tags":[867,340],"class_list":["post-11336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-talk","category-one-writers-journey","tag-music-lyrics-in-writing","tag-writing-tips"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judypenzsheluk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judypenzsheluk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judypenzsheluk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judypenzsheluk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judypenzsheluk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11336"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.judypenzsheluk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11343,"href":"https:\/\/www.judypenzsheluk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11336\/revisions\/11343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judypenzsheluk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judypenzsheluk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judypenzsheluk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}