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Let’s talk about the word.
“Lyrics,” I mean.
If I want to refer to the words of a particular song, I usually write or speak of the song’s lyric. (I'm aware of how strange that sounds to people; so, really, I waver on this, using "lyrics" frequently.)
Does my use of "lyric" surprise you?
I am now officially old and, as one who has seen and heard much, I can report a gradual shift in the use of the word “lyric/lyrics,” even in my lifetime. As a young person, I recall being corrected—I don’t recall who did the correcting—when I referred to a song’s “lyrics.”
“‘Lyric,’ not ‘lyrics,’” they said, authoritatively.
I vaguely recall being impressed by this authority, whoever it/she/he was. And so I mostly went along with that advice. And so, for the most part, I have referred to a song’s “lyric,” and thus to the “lyrics” on an album (i.e., many a lyric; hence lyrics, plural).
Still, it soon became obvious to me—even by the 1970s—that I had joined a shrinking minority. I was saying and thinking "lyric," but all I ever heard was "lyrics."
"Lyric" even sounded funny.
It sounds gravely funny today, and it’s not hard to find putative authorities correcting those who say “lyric.”
“‘Lyrics,’ not ‘lyric,” they say, authoritatively.
My issue with the use of “lyrics” instead of “lyric,” to the extent that I have one, is now clearly a case of “shoveling shite against the tide,” to use my late dad's favorite phrase.
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Let's consult the Oxford English Dictionary, which is pretty dang authoritative about the use of English words. It paints the following picture: “lyric,” the adjective, was originally simply the adjectival form of “lyre,” the musical instrument. But, as always happens, things got complicated in the English language. Among other things, “lyric” eventually became a noun that referred to poets and singers and, well, the words of a song or poem.
OK, HERE’S THE THING. By the late 19th Century, it appears that speakers of the language used the word “lyric” to refer to the words of songs.
Actually, the OED provides this definition: “The words of a popular song; frequently plural.”
– That last part ("frequently plural") perhaps implies that, according to the OED, “lyric” and “lyrics” were used interchangeably back then.
But wait! In truth, most of the OED’s early examples of the use of the noun, starting 1876, involve “lyric,” not “lyrics.” Here are the first three:
1876 J. STAINER & W. A. BARRETT Dict. Musical Terms 276/2 Lyric, poetry or blank verse intended to be set to music and sung.
1927 Melody Maker Aug. 759/3 On July 8 Edgar Leslie, the prolific and most successful lyric writer in America, arrived in London.
1933 Punch 16 Aug. 180/3 The gramophone plunged fervently into that lyric called ‘I've Got a Date with an Angel’.
The first use of “lyrics” (plural) that the OED mentions is in 1934:
1934 C. LAMBERT Music Ho! IV. 272 The lowbrow poet—the type of writer who in the nineteenth century produced ‘Champagne Charlie’ and now produces revue lyrics.
So I’m guessing that, in the late 19th Century, “lyric” was the word used for the words of a song, but then, by the 1930s, “lyrics” started being used too.
Here are the rest of the OED entries; they seem to reveal a pattern:
1938 Oxf. Compan. Music 526/2 Another well-known poet constantly advertises himself in the British musical press as ‘Lyric Author…2,000 songs…not one failure to give great pleasure’.
1946 E. O'NEILL Iceman Cometh II. 150 They all join in a jeering chorus, rapping with knuckles or glasses on the table at the indicated spot in the lyric.
1958 Times 2 Aug. 7/4 Teenagers in Minneapolis, believing that the words of some ‘pop’ songs can encourage juvenile crime, have..‘opened a nation-wide “better lyrics” contest’.
1967 Listener 3 Aug. 130/1 Having introduced a new sound in the music, they saw that they had next to change the type of lyric.
1968 Listener 7 Nov. 610/1 According to Mick Farren, lyric-writer of the Deviants: ‘Pop music is..the last free medium.’
1972 Jazz & Blues Sept. 12/1 The banality of the lyrics.
1973 Listener 19 Apr. 522/1 The bo' weevil fugues..in blues lyrics.
I’m guessing, then, that the English language experienced a shift from the dominance of “lyric” in the late 19th Century to the dual use of "lyric/lyrics" by about the 1930s; and, in subsequent decades, the use of “lyric” slowly faded, replaced, especially since the 70s—that's when I stumbled onto the scene—with the use of “lyrics.”
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Wikipedia—I know, I know—has a “lyrics” entry, including a section on “etymology,” which tends to confirm my guess:
"Lyric" derives via Latin lyricus from the Greek λυρικός (lyrikós), the adjectival form of lyre. It first appeared in English in the mid-16th century in reference to the Earl of Surrey's translations of Petrarch and to his own sonnets. Greek lyric poetry had been defined by the manner in which it was sung accompanied by the lyre or cithara, as opposed to the chanted formal epics or the more passionate elegies accompanied by the flute. The personal nature of many of the verses of the Nine Lyric Poets led to the present sense of "lyric poetry" but the original Greek sense of "lyric poetry"—"poetry accompanied by the lyre" i.e. "words set to music"—eventually led to its use as "lyrics", first attested in Stainer and Barrett's 1876 Dictionary of Musical Terms.
Stainer and Barrett used the word as a singular substantive: "Lyric, poetry or blank verse intended to be set to music and sung". By the 1930s, the present use of the plurale tantum [plural only] "lyrics" had begun; it has been standard since the 1950s for many writers. The singular form "lyric" is still used to mean the complete words to a song by authorities such as Alec Wilder, Robert Gottlieb, and Stephen Sondheim. However, the singular form is also commonly used to refer to a specific line (or phrase) within a song's lyrics.
If this is correct, it appears, then, that the person who corrected me 50 years ago was already shoveling shite—by which I mean, not that he was slinging crap, but that he was bucking a trend that was already decades old and approaching dominance.
If so, my present use of “lyric” is an instance of hyper- or super-trend buckery, aka abject fuddy-duddery. I may as well be referring to "palaver" or "lingo" or even "blarney."
On the other hand, I'm with Stephen Sondheim on this one. How uncool could that be?
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NEXT TIME: if I hear one more kid say that X is "based off" of Y, I'm gonna scream.
STILL LATER: I remember when "begging the question" was an informal fallacy!
