Not Your Usual Lyrics Post

I got too scared to use actual lyrics. I'm not published, but I have a character with a jukebox in his head. My story is set in the 80's, so it's also to set the time period.

Instead of quoting lyrics, I added details to set the point. I have very few examples that just say, blah song by blah artist, but I added one.

Totally my opinion, but I feel artists from years ago would love to have a reason for "the kids these days" to google their music, even if only for views on You Tube, but I could be wrong and they want to wring every dime they can get. Either way, I'd like to be published, and I didn't want to add the obstacle of gaining the rights to the process. I added a few examples that I think work without infringing on copyrights.


When I’d first heard James Taylor singing “You’ve Got a Friend,” I hadn’t realized it was only a song. I must have been in second grade at the time. I’d had a crush on one of the girls in school and I'd been just stupid enough to believe if I yelled her name she would appear like the song said. So, one desperate Sunday afternoon, I'd run up to my bedroom, shut the door and tried. It wasn’t until I'd heard my stupid voice that I realized. Duh!

“I’m seventeen,” I said, and strains of “At Seventeen” started playing on the jukebox in my head with Janis Ian whisper-singing her confessions in my ear.

The jukebox in my head often repeated “Brass in Pocket,” one of my favorite Pretender’s songs. Chrissie Hynde was going to get you to notice and so was I.

We were still on Route 1 when he turned off the radio, ending “In The Air Tonight” before Phil Collins did the big drum roll.

Joan Jett started shouting in my head, “Do you wanna touch? Do you wanna touch?”

My jukebox switched songs to “Don’t Touch Me There” by The Tubes. It’s another one that replayed often because they never say where there is.

I confess, I'm a paranoid poster, and I've actually done a few tweaks before putting this "out there." One of my favorite parts about being on this site is how REAL posting stuff makes it. I'm humbled I have to go do a few updates, LOL!

I just licensed a line from the Danny O'Keefe song, "The Road." The line is "A good song takes you far" and it frames my new book about the greatest rock songs since 1953
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1138638145/?tag=absowrit-20. It cost me $100 from the publisher, even though I emailed O'Keefe and he seemed to think I wouldn't have to pay for it. The publishers gave me a break on the price since my print run was so small. Same thing happened with photographers. The perks of obscurity.

Interesting Popmuze, I bet the publishers are the obstacle no matter what the artist thinks.

I was wondering, if you do another run, will you have to pay again?

Good luck with your book!

cmhbob said:

The answer in my case is yes, once I break 4000 copies.

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Good to know! I just checked out your shameless link--awesome article with many helpful links for anyone looking to obtain rights. Very generous of you to share all the links!

Congrats on over 4000! That's awesome!

I wonder how closely publishers follow the successive print runs of a book? All for a lousy $100?

I received permission from Leonard Cohen to use a line from the song Anthem. I received permission from Gordon Lightfoot to use a line AND to use him as a character. I emailed Lorraine Segato's management to get permission to use lines from Rise Up (Parachute Club) and to use her as a character. She called me herself and we had a full conversation about what she would and wouldn't do in the situations I outlined for her 'character' in my book. She explained the steps in securing the lines and gave permission once those steps were followed...and we talked for about 1/2 an hour about possible scenarios to her actions/reactions in the scenes I had her in.

Money spent? Zero. Lightfoot's manager said Lightfoot liked the chapter of my novel in which he was represented. That was cool. (-: I always say....ASK. You never know what will happen. The licensing thing might come up, the payment thing might be mandatory...depending on the artist, recording company, etc, etc, etc. The worst you can get is either a NO or a fee that's too much to pay for justifying the usage. The most you can get is a yes for nothing...and maybe a long phone conversation with someone you admire.

An important character in my novel has a tattoo of the lyrics to Pearl Jam's Whipping, so I really wanted to include that.

I started by searching for the song at all of the music publishing sites, including halleonard.com. I didn't find it. My search at Hal Leonard would only cough up Whipping Post. While that's a great song, it wasn't what I needed. So I emailed the band's management via their website form, which felt like a hail Mary pass. They responded by telling me to get in touch with their lawyer, who in turn told me to contact Hal Leonard.

I didn't give up. I went back to Hal Leonard and requested the song even though it didn't come up in their search function.

The process required jumping through some hoops, with about 4 weeks of back and forth emails. The griefiest was meeting their request for a separate PDF of each page in the novel that mentioned Pearl Jam. The novel is about Pearl Jam fans, so that was a project. I did it by creating a doc that split every page into its own PDF, then searching "Pearl Jam" and moving each page that had the term to a separate folder, which I zipped and sent to Hal Leonard.

But when they approved the usage for a mere $90 for 10,000 copies, I was thrilled.

I wouldn't bother going through all of that for an epigraph*, or just to toss off some lyrics thinking they'll set the mood for a scene. Lyric threads on AW explaining why that's not a best-practice are legion, so I'll spare you.

I blogged about my experience obtaining these rights.

On the whole, it was worth pursuing. If you really have a yen to include lyrics in your novel, I encourage you to give it a shot. You might be pleasantly surprised.


ETA: cmhbob, you're welcome to use my anecdote and/or blog post(s) with attribution. I am self-pubbed in print and digital. It's frustrating how often writers are told not to bother pursuing this. I'm so happy that you're addressing this myth. Here is another post that explains my thinking in going through the proper channels instead of using lyrics without permission.


*OK, maybe for part of Knife Edge as the epigraph for my current WIP:

Loaded down with your talents
Can you still keep your balance?
Can you live on a knife edge?

Yeah, probably not.

I got scared off after reading some of the warnings here on AW about various nightmare scenarios, and wound up writing my own song; but after reading Kevin's and DL's stories, I might reconsider trying for some rights. There's a Panic! at the Disco song, "Girls/Girls/Boys," that becomes very important to my MC and I really want to have her quote it directly at a pivotal moment in the relationship/self-discovery arc (currently I just reference the title, and hope the readers know the song).

Does anyone know about quoting movies? I have a couple from The Exorcist, and "I hate snakes" from Raider's of the Lost Ark. They're all very common take-aways that I imagine have been used on social media.

The thought of needing permission feels daunting, but the percentage is low compared to the script.

I tend to reference things, instead of quote them. I think my most blatant reference was naming a character Johnny Boy, after the character from Mean Streets. The character wasn't really like him, but he wanted to be like him (which shows how bad my character's judgement was) so he took his name as a pseudonym. But that comic never went to the publishing stage, so I never really found out what I would have to do to get licensing for that.

Usually, if I want to have lyrics in a story, I write my own.

I found this answer in a comments section from Jane Friedman's blog about copyrights. (Link below)

Do you need approval to use the name of a song, movie, actor’s name, or names of products that are or were for sale, in a book you’re writing?
Also do you need approval to use a quote like example: “Go ahead make my day” that became popular from a movie and is all over the internet?

No in either case.

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I'm probably going to write versions without the quotes too, though they're up there with "Make my day."

Link