Lately, I’ve had the honor of working with some really great older kids, mainly preteens and teens. I realized how much I really enjoy working with this age because not only are they developing their own music preferences but what they learn at this stage will carry with them on to adulthood. In sessions with clients who are able to engage in verbal discussion, I really love doing lyric analysis. Lyric analysis is a technique we use in music therapy where we take the lyrics of a song and use them to talk about various ways the song relates to them or not. I like to encourage my clients to circle/underline/cross out any words and/or phrases which stick out to them or even ones they don’t like, for whatever reason. I even tell my clients that they can draw anything that the song makes them think of. Lyrics analysis is such a great tool because verbally talking about emotions can be really daunting to kids, so using a song as a vehicle to go about doing so can take the pressure off. For this month, I’ve included a lyric sheet of the wonderful KidLinks song, “Perfectly Imperfect”, written by Gina Glidewell, MT-BC. We hope this can be a great addition to your sessions! 

 

Sara Chigani, MA, MT-BC