Mariah Carey on How to Write Lyrics

Dubbed “Songbird Supreme” and the “Queen of Christmas,” Mariah Carey is a celebrated singer-songwriter known for her stunning five-octave vocal range, riff skills, and chart-topping popular songs. Mariah has won five Grammy Awards and sings everything from love songs (“Visions of Love”) to holiday hits (“All I Want for Christmas Is You”). Often writing her own songs, she infuses her works with great lyrics, chugging chord progressions, and infectious melodies.

For the first time in music history, Mariah became the first artist to have their initial five singles reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. “One Sweet Day,” recorded with Boyz II Men, became the longest-running No. 1 Billboard song of the 1990s. Her success followed into the millennium: She produced hit song after hit song, broke into film (starring in the Academy Award-winning film Precious), went on American Idol as a judge, and published a bestselling memoir. The Songwriters Hall of Fame inducted Mariah in 2022.

The art of songwriting combines many skills. In terms of music, a songwriter or a songwriting team must tackle song structure, melody, harmony, rhythm, and instrumentation. Beyond these musical components, songwriters must also tackle lyric writing. Many good songs work off a familiar formula: the intro, first verse, chorus, second verse, second chorus, bridge, and then the final chorus. Connecting each part of your song are lyric lines, which tell a story and paint a picture for the listener. “I love songwriting,” Mariah says. “For me, that's my talent. That's what I'm best at.”

Mariah Carey offers step-by-step tips to develop song ideas and write better lyrics. Even beginners can get their creative process moving with these ideas that have inspired some of Mariah’s favorite songs:

1. 1. Illuminate things that are difficult to articulate. You can use music to express yourself. “I wrote Outside about specific feelings of otherness that I felt as a child,” Mariah says. “For me, it was about being biracial and how that has really become such a . . . I don't know that there's one word that I can use to describe what that’s done to me. It’s sort of the bane of my existence. To be Black and biracial is a very specific thing . . . And especially when you grow up in white neighborhoods, and you go through the different things that I went through, it's been an interesting journey.”
2. 2. Push yourself to experiment deeper. Lean into your feelings, and try to find the words to address their complexity and strength. Mariah says, “I think you can have fun choosing the words in your songs; maybe challenge yourself to use words that paint a more vivid picture of what you’re trying to say. These new words might even inspire new stories in your writing.”
3. 3. Spend time alone. Reflection by yourself can prove fruitful, and when words strike, write them down. Mariah wrote a song for Hero, a 1992 film starring Dustin Hoffman. At the initial meeting for the music, Mariah came up with an idea after learning the movie’s synopsis. “I took a five-minute break to go to the ladies’ room because I took it in, and I was like, it goes like this: ‘Then a hero comes along, with the strength to carry on,’” she says. “It’s just so weird. But sometimes, because I’m never alone, when I get a moment by myself, ideas come to me.”
4. 4. Turn small memories into big songs. Mariah’s song “Sunflowers for Alfred Roy” is a remembrance of her late father. “It’s an important song to me . . . he sort of represented, like, this tall, proud sunflower for me,” she says. “I wrote about specific moments in our lives from when I was a little kid. I wrote about things I wanted to say to him.”
5. 5. Write about the realness. In songwriting, specificity matters because the more hyperspecific something is, the more relatable it can become. “I’ve chosen to be very specific and real about certain things in certain songs,” Mariah says. “Your personal experiences should come through in your writing no matter how relatable you aim to be.”

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