[stylist] question about song lyrics

[Donna Hill]

Chris,
I wondered about this a while back, when I was thinking of including the
lyrics of someone else's song in my novel. I looked it up, and to the best
of my recollection, using a portion of the lyrics is covered under the same
section as quoting from a text; you need to credit the person but you don't
need permission. It's like when you're writing an academic paper; you quote
a passage and credit the author. If you want to use a substantial portion of
the work, you do need permission. Substantial portion is different depending
on the length of the work. There's a term for this that I can't recall, but
I did read it online on the Copyright website. I ultimately decided to
simply mention the song and not use any of the lyrics.
HTH,
Donna 

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Chris Kuell
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2012 3:59 PM
To: Stylist
Subject: [stylist] question about song lyrics

Greetings,

I'm reading a manuscript (on my VR Stream - thank you very much) and have a
question about the use of song lyrics in a novel, for those who know what
they are talking about. In one place, a character is listening to the radio
when a favorite John Mayer song comes on and the main character sings along
for a few lines, "I'm bigger than my body, bigger than my body, bigger than
my body gives me credit for..." 

At another point she's in the shower singing the first four lines of Pat
Benatar's 'Love is a Battlefield'. 

In both of the above cases, the song lyrics compliment the theme of the
scenes.

My question is--is it okay to use these lines without permission? Is it okay
to use these lines if the author references the song, artist, label and date
recorded/produced at the end of the book? Or, should the writer not use the
lines unless he gets permission from the artist?

Thanks,

chris
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