Young Writers Society

Hey there! Scarlet here, as you know It's review day.

You know what that means, time to review!

Nitpicks first...

- Now I see this a lot, you lack In punctuation. It may be different with lyrics but I still believe you should use punctuation.

She said “Mama” and I almost cried

And he will no loner be alone

And he will no longer be alone

Hello!

First of all, I'd like to say as someone with family who are veterans, this lyric piece... was emotional, in a way. As praise, I'd like to say that you've tackled a subject that not many song-writers do, even in the modern day as the military becomes more and more commonplace in our lives, considering the recent conflicts.

As critique... some of your rhymes are very forced - "total separation/is hurting his motivation" sounds somewhat childish, and I know you didn't mean for it to, but it honestly sounds like something that a younger child would write for an example sentence for the word 'motivation' or something the like. I think it would be much better if you took a step back and looked at your rhymes again to figure out if you really need those exact words, or if you have a better image that you can include. Keep in mind that these days, a lot of songs don't rhyme, and a lot of artists keep the song together through the melody, not the similarity of the words!

Also, some of your grammar and spelling is a bit off (which I know wouldn't be a huge deal when it's being sung, but it's a little strange to read it in type). For example, "and he will no loner" - I think you meant "longer" - and "pain is just all to real" - you meant "too".

I think that these lyrics are very sentimental, but they could also use a bit of polishing and rewriting for the sake of flow and the sake of being easily sung. While some of these words might look nice on paper, because this is meant to be a song, you have to keep in mind how they would sound with a tune to them.

Hey there!

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the most musically inclined person, and that in my time I've read lets of lyrics that have fallen flat for me. It can be a hard thing, to gather a song from just the words, when the music is missing, which is why reviewing lyrics can be tricky. But that wasn't a problem here. I don't know why, but I imagined this as a rap song, so I'm curious to see what you were actually imaging.

I can always tell when a story is personal to the author, and this is definitely the case here. Those make the best stories, because you're writing about things you feel strongly about, things you have experience with. One thing I would suggest that could make this stronger is taking a specific voice (those always are my favorite songs) - either of the mother or the father. You have very different paths to take, but I think either of them would be good.

Best of luck!

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Hi there! Alliyah is here to review your lyrics.

Grammar and Spelling
I saw two grammar mistakes: "And he will no loner be alone" --> "loner" should be "longer"

And in this line "The pain is just all to real" --> "to" should be "too".

The only other grammar suggestion I would have is because the whole song lacks punctuation (which is completely fine for a song because you hear it and do not read it) I would suggest being consistent and removing the only punctuation mark you have in the very first line "Far away, overseas in foreign lands".

Rhythm and Wording
I don't know if you have real music that this song goes to, or if it's just words at this point, so my comments might be irrelevant if the song's rhythm goes better with how it's already written.
In a few spots it seemed like the line was a bit too long.
This line "And he is missing all these beautiful memories" had quite a few syllables and might be better split up between "these" and "beautiful".

"But these days seem..." "And he struggles and cries..." (These two lines are also a little bit long)

Now for wording:
It seems like you start too many lines with "And" it gets almost excessively repetitive and doesn't add much meaning or clarity so you could probably take a few out.

In the line:

"And he struggles and cries because he wants to be"

"Because her brave and manly soldier"

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Hello.

This has a country feel to it, and I could actually get a decent rhythm out of just the words on their own, which surprised me. It's hard to get a good sense of how words and music marry, and with this it was actually pretty good.

My one thing about the rhythm is sometimes you end up repeating words and having accidental internal rhymes, such as "home" in the first verse (lines three and four). When you're relying on end rhymes like you are right now, internal repetition right on top of each other is detrimental to the song's flow.

Onto the story itself, I found it hard to actually pinpoint who this song was sung by and who it was relating to, especially in the first verse. You start off with the soldier thinking of home, and everything but the last line could be him thinking about how he's away from his family. As a result there was a very sudden switch and I had no idea when you'd started talking about his wife instead of the soldier.

It's hard to really get a clear picture of this because you switch back and forth between he and his wife so much in a short song. There's also a random line about "I", who I have no idea about. The first chorus could be about the wife at home, but that last line makes it sound like he's Skyping home and it's just difficult to figure out what, exactly, is going on.

Overall, love the rhythm but the flow could use some work and the story is really confusing. Make the two "worlds", so to speak, of the soldier and the homefront be a little better defined so we know what imagery and emotions relate to which person. That's really my only hangup with this, but it's a pretty big one.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

~Rosey

Hello! KatyaElefant here for another review on this here, REVIEW DAY! *looks gracefully up to the sun* Let us see what we have here.

NITPICK
"And he will no loner be alone"
Did you mean longer? (in place of loner).

NITPICK 2:
"The pain is just all to real"
Just small grammar error here. To should be too.

For somethings that I think that you can improve on. For one, you could always do better on grammar. As far, as I know, you need correct grammar in a song, so one can sing it. Is it me, or should this song be extended to be longer? I feel like you could make a concluding stanza in which he dies, or comes back to his family(depending on what direction you want to go with this). Just some small things, that I feel like you could do. (No pressure). If you want to make a short pause for something, you just put a period. I feel like you could do this at the ending. The last line could make a great grand ending!

There are many things that I love about this song! I love the poetry of the words! I just love it! Whenever I read one of these, I always sing it and this is such a pretty song! (Though I have no idea how the tune goes). The overall theme is amazing. You sure did a great job with that. The organization is perfect. I feel like this needs to be sung on the Fourth of July instead of the National Anthem! Great job! Keep writing!

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