Literary Devices In Lyrics

1. Literary Devices In Lyrics

2. SIMILE A comparison between UNLIKE items using “like” or “as.”

3. Examples: • “Life is like a ride on a freeway.” • “A dream is like a river.” • “Forever ain’t that long, when your smile is stuck in your head like a pop song.”

4. METAPHOR A direct comparison between unlike items--does not use “like” or “as.”

5. Examples • “I’m a speck thrown on a map.” • “Love is a burning thing.” • “The process of belief is an elixir when you’re weak.” • “We are the prey, and culture is the predator.

6. HYPERBOLE Intense exaggeration, usually intended to make a point.

7. Examples: • “I need 10,000 angels to walk me out the door.” • “Maybe we’re worlds apart.”

8. Onomatopoeia Words that mimic real-life sounds.

9. Examples: • “BANG, BANG, the nail guns rang out.” • “Here comes the BOOM.” • “whoppa whoppa whoppa whoppa”

10. Imagery Descriptions that use the five senses (sight, smell, taste, touch, sound)

11. Examples: • “blue clear sky.” • “My little black heart breaks apart.” • “My brain is hanging upside down.” • “I can see my breath in between the words that fog my spinning head.”

12. ALLITERATION: Repeating a consonant sound, usually at the beginning of words.

13. EXAMPLES: • “Mass paranoia is a Mode not a Malady.” • “Coffin Created for Creative thought” • “Sick Sick Senses that Sense DNA on barbed wire fenCes.

14. Personification Giving life-like qualities to non-living things.

15. Examples: • “Street’s idle chatter tears your heart strings to tatters.” • “London calling.” • “If my heart says ‘I’m sorry’ can we leave it at that.” • “This place will chew you up and spit you out before you go.”

16. Couplet • A unit of poetry that has two lines, usually rhymed. “For something is amiss or out of place When mice with wings can wear a human face.”

17. Stanzas • “The paragraphs of poetry” • Groups of lines that form the units of poems All but blind In his chambered hole Gropes for worms The four-clawed mole.

18. Symbol • An object with a double meaning. • A thing that stands for something besides itself.

19. IRONY Something said or done that is the opposite of what you would expect.

20. Examples: • “It’s for the better, your better half is gone.” • “We were different, just like all the other kids.” • “The beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair.” • “No sense, no guide, ain’t it beautiful to be alive?”

21. Bad Religion Relient K Less Than Jake The Clash The Ramones Alkaline Trio George Strait Unwritten Law Garth Brooks Mindy McCready Philmore P.O.D. The Offspring Social Distortion/Johnny Cash Lyrical examples courtesy of: