”It’s only words,” the Bee Gees sang on one of their early hits, managing not only to be grammatically suspect, but to underplay the importance of words. Only words? Try telling that to the contestants on the new panel game Don’t Forget the Lyrics, on Sky soon. If they get the right words, they could be going home with £250,000. So, what is it that makes a memorable lyric? Why do we remember the words to one song, but quickly forget so many others?

First of all, a memorable lyric is not the same thing as a great lyric. Certainly, we can remember lyrics from many of our favourite songs, but we can also remember the words to those irritatingly catchy but irredeemably trashy songs we’d much rather forget. Agadoo sticks to the brain cells as easily as Like a Rolling Stone.

A memorable lyric can be created through clever wordplay that toys with our expectations: Cole Porter’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, with the counter-intuitive answer “I don’t”, or Elvis Costello opening Oliver’s Army with the line “Don’t start me talking”. Equally, a lyric can stick because of its simplicity. “I want you so bad” is a long way from being the best line Bob Dylan ever wrote, but most of us would have a better chance of getting through the chorus of I Want You than through many of his more celebrated, but complex, refrains.

If you want to write a memorable lyric, it helps to have something to say that resonates with the human experience: the ache of U2’s I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, the resignation of the Rolling Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want. To paraphrase Homer Simpson, it’s memorable because it’s true.

One of the most resonant lyrics is My Way. The fact that this lyric speaks so clearly and memorably to millions doesn’t actually reflect well on us. As Frank Sinatra realised, the song is “self-serving and self-indulgent”, but guess what? We areself-indulgent sometimes, and we all have moments when we realise that, yes, we bit off more than we could chew, but we got through it, and do you know how we got through it? Our way, that’s how. No wonder we can all manage a self-glorifying karaoke version of the song.

My Way’s lyrics were written by Paul Anka, adapting a French song, Comme d’habitude; but Anka wasn’t the first person to put English lyrics to it. A then not particularly successful David Bowie gave it a try as well. When his Even a Fool Learns to Love was overshadowed by the Sinatra song, Bowie crafted a musical sulk, hinting heavily at the My Way chord structure on Life on Mars. The latter illustrates that, while a line that resonates universally can be memorable, so can one that doesn’t seem to have much meaning for anyone except the writer: “Sailors fighting in the dancehall/Oh man, look at those cavemen go.” Indeed.

We can just about make sense of that – possibly a reference to an old movie on television – but do any of us have a clue what “my Huckleberry friend” in Moon River, might refer to? Surely not, because the writer, Johnny Mercer, is referring to a childhood memory of his own – picking huckleberries with friends. Yet it’s an unforgettable line.

One good way to write a lyric that sticks in the minds of real people is to steal it from the mouths of real people. Lamont Dozier, of the Motown writing team Holland Dozier Holland, swears that “Stop! In the name of love” came from overhearing a couple arguing, and, though it seems unlikely, why should he divert the credit for such a great line to a complete stranger unless it is true? John Lennon habitually watched TV with a notepad by his side, hoping to snare great lines, but he and Paul McCartney had their best source for eavesdropping gems sitting behind them on stage. Ringo Starr’s mangling of – or inventiveness with – the English language spawned such unforgettable lines (and songs) as Eight Days a Week and A Hard Day’s Night.

Of course, you can’t hear the line “It’s been a hard day’s night” without first hearing that ringing guitar chord, and it would be disingenuous to pretend that many memorable lyrics aren’t actually the result of memorable music. Somewhere over the Rainbow is a concept that has had huge resonance over the years, but its power is undoubtedly augmented by the octave leap in the first two notes of the melody, which gives a physical echo of the yearning in the lyric.

Music can also give a momentum that pushes us on to the next line of the lyric. One of the most obvious examples is I Will Survive, a song with an extraordinary kinetic power. One reason it is so easy to remember is that it doesn’t suffer from “second verse syndrome”. Even your favourite songs, even the ones you think you remember, may make you stumble when you hit the second verse. You know the opening line, and the narrative flow takes you through the first verse and into the catchy chorus; but the second verse usually involves a change of perspective, and that’s often where our memory lets us down. I Will Survive, however, doesn’t seem to bother with verses and choruses; it just goes on and on, building and building. If you can start it, you may well be able to finish it.

Lyrics can provide their own momentum, especially in list songs. From Cole Porter’s Let’s Do It to Paul Simon’s 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, songs that feature lists provide their own inexorable logic, their own in-built memorability. One way to leave your lover might be to leave him “standing on a station platform in the rain with a comical look in his face because his insides have been kicked out”. That – as film fans won’t need telling – is how Ilsa leaves Rick (the first time) in Casablanca. The much-loved movie contains an equally loved and memorable song. Indeed, the opening line of As Time Goes By – “You must remember this” – could easily apply to the song itself.

Which is a timely reminder that, for all the skills of generations of songwriters, the memorability of a song’s lyric very often depends not on the words themselves, but on the context in which we first heard them, the external associations we have with them and the memories they evoke.

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