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It’s day 2 of our Week of Lyric Writing Tools. This time, we’re going to look at utilizing parallelism in lyrics.  

Parallelism

You have to love some good parallelism. Star Wars has made plenty of use of parallels. 

Both Luke and Anakin lose their hands.

Both (as well as Rey) come from small beginnings on a desolate desert planet.

And both of them have their temptation scene with Darth Sidious seated in a metal chair with space behind him. In both, the young Jedi is tempted to kill the sith apprentice. Anakin makes the wrong choice and does, while Luke does the right thing and takes mercy. 

There are plenty of other examples, but take a look at those two clips and you will see the obvious parallel. 

We can do the same thing with our songs. A great example of parallelism in a song is Fast Car by Tracy Chapman.

Listen to get the rest!