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Glenn Slater gets his office space for a song.
Rather than pay thousands a month in rent, the Broadway and Hollywood lyricist behind Disney’s new animated blockbuster “Tangled” writes his rhymes at the New York Public Library.
With his MacBook, thesaurus, rhyming dictionary and scattered pages of handwritten notes, Slater looks as if he’s composing a dissertation, not penning songs for Disney.
But from his regular spot at the end of a long table in the Library for the Performing Arts on the Upper West Side, he writes the verses that will soon be on the tips of countless tongues.
Slater, 42, rejected offers for private work spaces because he prefers to be surrounded by “the sense of life you only get in public.”
And although many writers toil in cafes or at Starbucks, that was out of the question for a lyricist, he said.
“When you are trying to imagine one piece of music and another one is blaring, it’s agony,” he said. “What’s amazing is that there is no place in the city you can go that’s not playing music — except the library, that is.”
The library recreates the office energy Slater grew to depend on working as an advertising copywriter for six years.
A longtime collaborator with legendary composer Alan Menken, Slater has written lyrics for the stage versions of films such as “The Little Mermaid,” “Sister Act” and “Leap of Faith,” as well as “Love Never Dies,” the sequel to “Phantom of the Opera.”
He’s also been working on an adaptation of the Coen brothers’ 1994 movie “The Hudsucker Proxy.”
The sound that libraries are most known for is “shush,” which Slater says he often gets as he sings his new lines to himself.
“I don’t burst into full-throated song standing on the table. I mostly keep it under my breath,” he said. “But sometimes, there’s a point you need to feel the words in your mouth — and for that, I go outside.”
Slater used the main library on Fifth Avenue until switching to the performing-arts branch when he moved to the Upper West Side in 2001.
“I’ve met novelists, composers, and graduate students of every discipline,” he said.
“If you’re interesting enough to find your refuge in the library, you’re usually pretty interesting to talk to.”