cover image The Art of Writing Great Lyrics

The Art of Writing Great Lyrics

Pamela Phillips Oland. Allworth Press, $18.95 (255pp) ISBN 978-1-58115-093-3

Cruelly dumped, the songwriter storms into his or her studio, slams the door and writes a heartbreaking platinum hit. According to Pamela Phillips Oland, one of the most prolific songwriters in the nation, this is no melodramatic fantasy. Oland's songs have been recorded by Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Selena and Frank Sinatra and featured on Xena: Warrior Princess and The Sopranos. She has worked in nearly every popular genre: rock, country, gospel, R & B, theater, alternative rock, blues and jazz, and she shares dozens of the tricks of her much-envied trade in The Art of Writing Great Lyrics, a revised version of her 1989 book You Can Write Great Lyrics. She even has the honesty to include an exegesis of a failed attempt: the first song she ever wrote. ( June)