How do I learn lyrics?

I'm playing guitar and sing in a band. Mainly cover songs.
It seemes that I've lost the ability to learn lyrics by heart. It might be
too much beer, I don't know.
Anywhoo.. I learn the songs on guitar and hear them over and over again, but
the lyrics just don't stick to my brain.
I just wonder if anyone has a tip for a technique or something on how to
learn lyrics quickly?

tarper...

I do the blues guitar and the blowfiddle (clarinet). The latter without
singing of course :-))

Why first learn the chords and tunes, then the lyrics afterwards?

I try to grasp the song (tunes and lyrics) as a unit. And while I'm learning
the song I search for the chords. Gives me more time to sort the words in
correct order. But this works only when the song already touches me
emotionally.

It is a general problem of learning: Boring things get forgotten,
interesting things get remembered.

So if learning the lyrics is boring to you, try to make some interesting
thing out of it, e.g. by searching different chords (e.g. transposed or
more jazz-like) while you "re-learn" the song. Or by exploring a guitar
picking solo for it.

Greetings
Tarper

John Dean...

You could do what Pete Seeger did - write the lyrics on a piece of paper and
tape them to the back of your instrument.

R H Draney...

That's one method that's been used...others have found success in changing them
as they go along, later claiming that their version is an "interpretation" of
the original....

(Funny thing about this problem is that the bards and minstrels of olde used to
set stuff to music to *make* it easy to remember)....r

An answer will be greatly appreciated.