Lyricist

A lyricist is a writer who specialises in song lyrics. The Tin Pan Alley

A lyricist is a writer who specialises in song lyrics. The Tin Pan Alley tradition is that tunesmith and wordsmith are usually different people, though some celebrated songwriters have performed both functions (Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Frank Loesser, Noel Coward and Steven Sondheim for example). Among the leading lyricists are Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II, who both wrote with Richard Rodgers, Ira Gershwin who wrote with brother George, Johnny Mercer and Johnny Burke.

In recent years it is almost universal that songwriters are responsible for both words and music. John Lennon and Paul McCartney set the trend for performers taking responsibility for providing their own material. Country music pioneer Hank Williams and folkies Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger pointed the way for American artistes from Bob Dylan onwards. Even specialists who write for somebody else to perform (the spectacularly successful Diane Warren for example) now tend to write both words and music.