Face the Music

[This article first appeared in the January/February 2025 issue of Writer's Digest magazine.]

The craft of writing has its own set of commandments. 

Like, say: Thou shalt show, not tell.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s prose.

Thou shalt put thy butt in thy chair and write.

And, well, this one, which always struck me as particularly odd among the more obvious proscriptions: Thou shalt never include song lyrics in thy fiction, nonfiction, or poetry in any fashion, lest thou find thouself destined immediately and permanently for the void of literary oblivion and general financial ruin.

Years ago, I was an editor at Writer’s Digest. When you’re an editor at WD, you tend to learn in real time from publishing’s foremost pros, shortly before copy editing that knowledge and passing it on to readers. And right from the outset of the gig, one thing curiously kept coming up again and again: the fact that you should never publish song lyrics in your work. Ever. It’ll get you sued. It can kill your career. 

So, in my own writing, I never did. 

But then I signed a contract to write a book for Bloomsbury’s storied 33⅓ music series about the chaotic/fascinating tale behind Modest Mouse’s record The Moon & Antarctica. I assumed the most difficult part of the whole endeavor would be scoring interviews with the band, tracking down the people who worked on the record 25 years ago, or, well, you know … writing the book. 

But I was wrong. As a devout, practicing writer, I wanted to show, versus tell: I wanted to reprint the lyrics to each song in the book to let the band’s signature enigmatic, literary-infused wordplay speak for itself. 

After all, these days you can find the lyrics to any given song on myriad websites across the internet. We’ve all read novels prefaced by a song lyric. How tough could it really be to print some in a small nonfiction book? 

Soon enough, I found myself caught up in the cosmic forces of big music publishing—and I found out. 

If you’re a creative looking to celebrate the artistry of another creative work, the wall around song lyrics may seem decidedly … anti-creative. But the system is in place for a reason. 

Namely, as Amanda Schreyer—a media, entertainment, marketing, and technology lawyer at the firm Morse—points out, because an artist or band is more interested in doing what they do best (read: making music) than the minutiae of such topics as rights clearance. So various entities thus control the business side of songs, resulting in a veritable onion with layers and layers of complexity that can vary by artist and label. (“It is really convoluted,” Schreyer says.) 

For our purposes, what’s worth knowing is that there are record labels, which we’re all familiar with, and then there are music publishers. The latter holds the rights to specific compositions, as well as such things as lyrics. Here’s how to get your hands on them instead of a cease and desist. (With the obligatory disclaimer that none of this constitutes legal advice! Just … advice.) 

You don’t want to build the architecture of your story on something you might not even be able to use in the first place. So, Schreyer advises starting early. In my case, I sent an email to Modest Mouse’s (great) manager about halfway through the creation of the book. The album I was writing about was released on Epic Records, which is owned by Sony. Sony operates Sony Music Publishing, which happens to be one of the biggest businesses of its kind in the world. He gave me an email contact there, along with his and the band’s blessing around the project, and I thought I had it made … until I didn’t hear back. I followed up. Nothing. D’oh. Panic began to set in. Given the corporate machinations behind music at large, I should have indeed started earlier. 

Schreyer warns there is no set rule of thumb when it comes to the fair use doctrine here—e.g., no “it’s OK to quote just one line of a song,” etc. She says it’s often a bit safer to quote lyrics in an academic/analytical application versus a purely commercial endeavor—but “I would never tell anyone to just assume that the way you are using something is a fair use unless that person is well-versed in fair use jurisprudence.” To that end, she says different law schools often offer IP clinics to the public—and they’re dying for people to walk in with quandaries. So don’t hesitate to. 

I had the advantage of a relationship with the band to point me in the right direction—but that’s a rare luxury. If you don’t, any established artist will generally be a member of a licensing organization like ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) or BMI (yeah—even more layers of complexity, I know). You can search the name of a song across both at ASCAP.com/repertory. If the work is in the database—and there’s a good chance it will be, as those are two behemoths of the biz—you can click through to find the rights-holding publisher, including an email address. It may be a painfully looking general contact—you know, “info@ ...”—but don’t lose hope, like I briefly did. With my deadline speeding toward me, I took a shot in the dark and sent along my permissions request … and received an autoreply. But crucially, it contained the appropriate email addresses for everything from video game usage to commercials to, yes, print books. Score! I reached out and was shocked when I was working with a human in just a few days. 

Still, though … it’s a fairly convoluted process for what amounts to a simple ask. 

“It is supposed to be a scalable way to manage huge bodies of music,” Schreyer says, adding that it’s all theoretically supposed to make it easier for someone to license IP—and thus easier for the licensor to make money from it. “But the actual interface is not great. [Sending] email[s] into the void or hoping your BFF from last year is still the receptionist next year … those kinds of things are not great.”

All of those extra email addresses I mentioned above offer some particularly painful perspective. Put yourself in the shoes of the rep you’re corresponding with: If you were working a multimillion-dollar commercial licensing project alongside a request for three song lyrics for a book from a small press that may net you just a couple hundred bucks, which would you prioritize? I hate it. But I’m also a realist and know I’m probably not at the top of the to-do list. To that end, be tenacious. (But always, polite—especially because that could help out the next writer in the queue.) 

I expected to jump through some hoops. I didn’t fully expect the quasi-show-dog levels they would entail. First order of business: a veritable application, in which I specified the requested song titles and songwriters, the type of work I wanted to use them in, my book’s publisher and address, the name of my editor, size of the print run, and so on. And, notably, the mandate for context pages for each lyric usage, plus a synopsis. Which was understandable … yet problematic, considering I had only written half the book at that point, and I’d only just gotten to the lyrics part. Ultimately, I asked if it would be OK to just send the synopsis along with a few sample use cases—and, mercifully, my contact said that was totally fine. This is all to say: Don’t be daunted by working with the people holding the keys to the castle. They are humans, too. And they can be quite nice and accommodating. So don’t be afraid to … 

About a week after I sent my materials through, I heard back—but my heart quickly fell when I opened the email and saw that the amount quoted totaled more than the advance I’d received for the book. Having originally assumed they’d be free, with nothing to lose (except, you know, large swaths of my outline), I figured, what the hell, I’d try to negotiate—and was candid about the financial side of things, adding an honest plea on the heels of Thanksgiving: “I'd so love to include them for readers as an example of Modest Mouse's artistry and to provide a full picture of the album. Is there any way to lower the rate? (Would be a holiday miracle on my end!)” 

They generously did. 

Is such negotiation normal? 

From a macro perspective, perhaps given the chump-change aspect of a lone lyric or two in a piece of writing, Schreyer says there’s likely no set formula for such deals, and music publishers could just be improvising as they go. Moreover, the value could vary depending on if you’re asking for lyrics by an obscure blues artist who died 75 years ago … or the latest tune by Taylor Swift. 

You may also be wondering: Did I ever ask my publisher if they’d pay the licensing fees? Likely to my accountant’s dismay, I did not. In addition to being up against a deadline, I’m the type of exhausting person who will obsessively work to get something down as I envision it—especially if it’s in print. And especially if it’s a book. Sure, I could have written around the lyrics or vaguely described them or retooled my outline to avoid all of this in the first place … but this was the most direct way to go from idea to the page, and for better or bankrupt, I went for it. (Theoretically, such things could also be negotiated at the book contract stage up front, should you have the foresight and wisdom. If the early bird gets the worm, the late bird is relegated to dealing with the licensing squirm.) 

Get that final agreement inked by both parties—and as always, pay attention to the mandates of the fine print, such as sending the music publisher finished copies of the book, article, or poem—and then keep those documents handy, so you can show your editor, who will no doubt be expecting them (and who will also no doubt be impressed by your feat of successfully obtaining them). 

You may feel as if you’ve just closed on a house. Or filed your taxes for the year. Or survived an IRS audit. 

But you’ll have those lyrics. And if they’re truly integral to your story, you’ll have earned them, while honoring the ultimate commandment of the creative craft at large: Thou shalt not steal. 

As Schreyer says, “It's easier to address issues ahead of time—and it's cheaper to address issues ahead of time than to try to undo them later on, especially if you are in the weaker bargaining position.”

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