Thanks for your input Gary. For me personally, I feel most people give their best recordings when they know the lyrics inside out and don’t need the lyric sheet anymore. So much so that when I hear some recordings, I can actually tell they didn’t know their lyrics off by heart and was reading from a sheet.

Generally having the song being second nature allows you to focus on putting the emotion in and raising / lowering the vocals at the right times.

Now of course this isn’t the same for all people, many can read off a sheet and still put a lot of emotion in it. I guess it just depends on how each person personally works best. If you prefer and work better with written lyrics when recording, more power to you. 🙂

I have found that writing out lyrics by hand helps greatly in me remembering them later. For a new song, I’ll write out the words and practice with them. Actually writing them out goes a long way in remembering the words later, without the sheet, like on stage.