A good way to memorize lyrics is to look at the song as a monologue or a story. Write or type the words, including the punctuation, so you can examine the lyrics apart from the melody and take a look at the big picture. If the song has words that you don’t know, look them up.
Find the meaning and the pronunciation of all the words in your song. Notice the punctuation, because you can breathe at the punctuation marks in a song.
Read the lyrics out loud so you can hear the inflection of the words. As you read the lyrics, look for the operative words — the words that you emphasize in normal, natural, everyday speech. Operative words are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. The rest of the words in the sentence are important but aren’t usually emphasized. Keep reading the text aloud until it sounds conversational.
If you keep forgetting the words, speak through the text quickly until you no longer stumble on the words. You can also use key words in phrases to help you remember what comes next. Create a system to help you remember the order of each phrase’s key word. Just knowing whether the list has some common characteristics can help you remember key words to get to the next phrase.
Sometimes when you read poetry or lyrics for the first time, they don’t make complete sense. The more you read them, the more you’re able to understand the meaning behind the words. When you really have a grasp on the words, memorize them. You may find that it takes only a short time to memorize the words.
