I'd like to write a story that reads as though a song were being played in the background. The lyrics of the song are important to the story. I had thought of doing so by switching back and forth between the telling of the story in regular text, and stanzas of the lyrics, in italics. The song I have in mind is long published and copyrighted, etc.

Would I have any right to attempt to publish that story if I wrote it? What if I only used a few of the lyrics and not the whole song?

My read of this, is that I would not have the right to do so, even if it were just a few lines of lyrics. What do you think?

Neil Gaiman had a post about this before, but I don't have time to find the link right now.

The option is to contact the copyright holder to ask if and how much compensation they want (they may charge per line, it's up to them, or they just may want proper attributes).

If you can't afford the price, the only thing you can do is mention it vaguely.

Edited to remove misquote

If the copyright holder is not a record company, you may have a chance, because the lyricist may be okay with your quoting the song. You will still have to pay somebody something, though.

Hi, Neil. I just have a quick question with nowhere else, at least visible, to turn. How does an unagented writer go about obtaining permission from a recording artist (or their management) to use excerpts of song lyrics in short works of fiction that they intend to (attempt) to publish?Much thanks in advance.

You don't go to the songwriter (unless the songwriter controls their own publishing). You go to the music publisher. You can normally find the music publishing information on a CD -- if you can't then you could search for the publisher through ASCAP -- http://www.ascap.com/ace/search.cfm?mode=search -- or BMI -- http://www.bmi.com/search/. Then you write to the publisher explaining what it is you want to do and asking how much it'll be.

In my experience it's usually about $150 per quote. (On the other hand, the people who control the song "Under The Boardwalk" said this week that seven words would cost $800 and it wasn't negotiable, and I thought for a moment, and changed

"Under the boardwalk..." he sang. "We'll be making love."

to

He sang. In his song he told them all exactly what he planned to do under the boardwalk, and it mostly involved making love.

which I liked better, and didn't cost anything.)

I think I only have two options:

1) don't write the story, or
2) write my own lyrics

Now a question I would ask is would you owe royalties if you wrote your own lyrics to an existing copywrited song and said

My Song (to the tune of 'His Song')

Assuming the song is not a parody of the original song(which would not require royalties)

edit: added the words 'your own'