Advice needed please (using song lyrics/titles)

CH1 · Feb 19, 2010

I have an idea for a story and I just wanted to get your opinion on something that my later cause me problems.

I'm thinking of using a couple of lines from a famous song as an opening and possibly chapter breaks and am worried about the legality side of it.

Chris P · Feb 19, 2010

You'll need permission from the copyright holder to quote the song, unless it's a widely known folk song in the public domain.

CH1 · Feb 19, 2010

Thank you Chris for your reply. Unfortunately it's a recent very popular song, so I think I'll have to keep searching..

CaroGirl · Feb 19, 2010

You can't quote copyrighted song lyrics without permission. Getting permission is a legal and financial hassle unless you're Stephen King. Basically, don't bother trying to quote a song lyric.

However, you can use song titles all day long without a problem.

CH1 · Feb 19, 2010

CaroGirl said:
However, you can use song titles all day long without a problem.

I was going to use lyrics as the intro to the book plus as a kind of chapter break. Song titles could work as well.
So as an example:

"I got a feeling" By The Black Eyed Peas or just

"I got a feeling"

Would it make a difference?

Maryn · Feb 19, 2010

IANAL, but I think either is perfectly legal. (Is that how the caps are on the CD? Odd.)

Maryn, not all that helpful

Libbie · Feb 19, 2010

Do bear in mind that using popular music in your writing is likely to date your work.

Manuel Royal · Feb 19, 2010

It just occurred to me that the title of a story I recently submitted is a line from a popular song. Oops.

CH1 · Feb 19, 2010

Libbie said:
Do bear in mind that using popular music in your writing is likely to date your work.

Very good point

Jamesaritchie · Feb 19, 2010

I think worrying about dating your work is pointless. Every last work anyone writes is going to be easily dated, even if it's set five thousand years in the furtue. You can read any novel and have a very good idea exactly when it was written, and any novel set in the modern world is easy to date.

And if you could somehow mangage not to include naything that would date your work, it would float in nowhere, neverwhere, and probably be a lousy book.

It's your writing style you want to keep dateless so poeple can still easily and pleasurably read your work in fifty or a hundred years.

But you will not and cannot stop your work from being dated, and shouldn't want to. I don;t know where the idea comes form that dating your work is bad. It sure hasn't harmed the hundred and thousands of dated novels that have been around for anywhere from decades to centuries.

Anyway, you can use titles of songs, and you can use a lyric from a song as a title. Just don't use lyrics themselves in teh body of your work.

CH1 · Feb 20, 2010

Jamesaritchie said:
Anyway, you can use titles of songs, and you can use a lyric from a song as a title. Just don't use lyrics themselves in teh body of your work.

So if I understand you correctly, I could use a song name as the title of the story and I can use different song names as chapter breaks.

What I mean by chapter breaks (probably the wrong term) is not the traditional, Chapter 1 followed by Chapter 2. My scene is all in one building from one pov, at this moment I cannot see a need for chapters and was going to insert breaks instead, for ease of reading.

Jamesaritchie · Feb 20, 2010

WHU said:
So if I understand you correctly, I could use a song name as the title of the story and I can use different song names as chapter breaks.

What I mean by chapter breaks (probably the wrong term) is not the traditional, Chapter 1 followed by Chapter 2. My scene is all in one building from one pov, at this moment I cannot see a need for chapters and was going to insert breaks instead, for ease of reading.

Yes. Since titles can't be copyrighted, you can use any song title you like, in any way you like. Nor can any phrase shorter than four words be copyrighted, so you can play with this "loophole" to get some other material added.

CH1 · Feb 21, 2010

Thank you Jamesaritchie and eveyone else who replied..

blacbird · Feb 21, 2010

As a cautionary addendum, though, I've never listened to a Blackeyed Peas song in my life, and wouldn't recognize the reference. That's your biggest problem with using any current pop-culture reference. We're in Andy Warhol's age of 15-minutes-of-fame. Think hard about why you really need such things in your writing, whether or not you really need them, and what they are intended to accomplish for a reader.

caw

CaroGirl · Feb 22, 2010

Is the pop-culture-will-date-your-work issue problematic because no one knows whether this particular musical group/ TV show/ film will be enduring? In my novel, which is set in the 70s and in the 80s, I use a lot of pop-culture references from those decades. From Gilligan's Island and Keds sneakers to Vuarnet sunglasses and The Cult. I want to evoke the time period and I use the references purposefully. If I were writing about contemporary events, and am purposely setting it in 2010, what's wrong with using references to the Black Eyed Peas? Is the problem that their popularity won't endure? I think any group with their current popularity is safe enough to include in one's fiction.

Jamesaritchie · Feb 22, 2010

blacbird said:
As a cautionary addendum, though, I've never listened to a Blackeyed Peas song in my life, and wouldn't recognize the reference. That's your biggest problem with using any current pop-culture reference. We're in Andy Warhol's age of 15-minutes-of-fame. Think hard about why you really need such things in your writing, whether or not you really need them, and what they are intended to accomplish for a reader.

caw

Why does it matter whether you understand the reference to Blackeyed Peas? That isn't what the novel is about, and no matter what's used, some won't get it, and it shouldn't matter.

If it mattered that novels only use things where I understood all the references, I probably couldn't read anything written more than thirty years ago, or half of what I read today. I sure couldn't read most of Stephen King's work.

Shoot, I don;t understand five percent of the references King uses to pop culture, and I've nevr heard of most of the bands or songs he uses throughout his novels. He's still one of my favorite writers, and those references and bands and songs I've never heard of don't take away from the reading, they add to it.

When you start thinking about the readers, you stop writing anything meaningful.

blacbird · Feb 22, 2010

I agree with you here, James. I guess my main point was expressed in the final sentence of my post, which was just a recommendation that the writer think pretty hard about the purpose of such references. I've seen more than one manuscript in which these things were embedded throughout the story to the extent they clog it down unbearably, and seem to have been put in their just to make the thing feel cooler and more hip to the writer.

I don't think much about the readers, either, but that's probably because I don't have any.

caw

Advice needed please (using song lyrics/titles)

CH1

AW Addict

Chris P

Likes metaphors mixed, not stirred

CH1

AW Addict

CaroGirl

Living the dream

CH1

AW Addict

Maryn

I Tried

Libbie

Worst song played on ugliest guitar

Manuel Royal

CH1

AW Addict

Jamesaritchie

CH1

AW Addict

Jamesaritchie

CH1

AW Addict

blacbird

CaroGirl

Living the dream

Jamesaritchie

blacbird