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50 Theme Ideas for Your Songwriting

50 Theme Ideas for Your Songwriting

You want to write a song and you have lots of time but no ideas? Coming up with an idea for a song or lyric can prove more difficult than you think. We've compiled a list of ideas to get you started, broken down by subject area:

 

Love songs

  • The joy of finding new love
  • The pain of a recent break up
  • The suffering of a relationship you can't get out of
  • Jealousy over a former lover being with someone else
  • Unrequited love for someone you can't have
  • Interference from someone else into your relationship
  • A description of your physical attraction to another
  • Your dreams for the future of your relationship or future partner
  • Your disgust at love and all that it represents
  • Your hatred for other happy couples
  • How you don't understand your partner
  • Reminiscing over a former lover
  • The love you have for your mother or father
  • Your feelings towards someone who has lied to you
  • Your plan to break up with someone
  • The distance between you and a lover
  • Telling someone you love them
  • Your description of someone you admire
  • The enjoyment you get talking to someone
  • The monotony of your relationship
  • Your apology to someone
  • Your desperation for someone
  • The virtues of the person you love
  • How you'll always be there for someone

 

Your life

  • Your love for a town, city or country
  • Your love for a season or a country scene
  • Your love for an animal/bird/natural object
  • The wishes for your future
  • The story of your life
  • The lessons you have learnt
  • Your admiration for a famous person
  • A story about a person you once knew
  • How a stranger has affected your life
  • Your longing for freedom
  • The story of your travels
  • Your failures
  • Your home
  • A cry for help
  • Your recovery from a setback
  • Illusion and deception
  • Your descent into despair
  • Your hatred for someone
  • Some advice you are able to give

 

Topical/political songs

  • Your comments on the latest news
  • Your protest about a current war or other negative event
  • Your take on the nature of society
  • How you don't understand why certain people have done certain things
  • The different sides of an argument
  • Your religious views or your love for god or other spirituality
  • How history is repeating itself

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Is Your Chorus Good Enough?

Is Your Chorus Good Enough?

As a songwriter, are you ever worried that your chorus is not good enough? Not catchy, not interesting, not what you hoped it would be?

When I write songs, I often have trouble finishing them. I complete the lyrics and melody, sometimes with the help of others, sometimes on my own. But almost always I have what I call a chorus crisis.

I worry the chorus is not quite catchy or interesting enough. Then is I try to rework it many times over and I get all confused about which is the best version. Maybe I should just have stuck with the original chorus?

What is a chorus?

For many it's the core message of the song - the signature, the centrepiece, the hook. The chorus puts a flag in the ground and says I'm here. It typically contains the song’s melodic motifs and memorable moments as well as lyrical content that is repeated through the tune. It summarises the story and tries to give the listener the bigger picture.

Think about the chorus as not being part of the lyrics, but being the song itself. The reason for the song. The Chorus should give the song direction and clarity. It's a tool that can be used to make sense of the lyrics.

What is a verse?

If the chorus is a billboard, the verses are the structure that holds up the billboard. They are there to support the chorus and explain why it's there, or ask questions about it. Each verse usually has different lyrics but a similar melody and chord structure.

The verses should progressively build up to the chorus, leading to that moment when your chorus opens its heart with profound or important lyrics. These lyrics are often more personal and look at the finer details by telling a story.

How do you solve a chorus crisis?

One simple idea to try first is to start with the chorus and build the verses around it. That way you can quickly discard ideas you don't like, rather than waste lots of time crafting out verses, only to find you have writers block with the chorus.

Once you've found a chorus you like, write verses with lyrics that explain the chorus. You could use each verse to look at the chorus from a different perspective, or a way of chronologically charting the story.

Another idea is to save all your versions of the chorus, by recording it into your phone or computer. Then, at a later date, refer back to them when your song hits a chorus crisis. You might find your original version was the best one and better than you realised.

You might find it useful to have input from another songwriter or lyricist. Look for those people who are genuinely willing to support you. Collaboration is a great way of writing more interesting songs and helps with writers block or a bottleneck you just can't get past. You may also make a new friend!

Play your music to others to see how they react. You will soon get an idea of whether the chorus is good or not. A good chorus works when it can be sung easily - the sing-ability. You may notice this much better when you sing it to other people.

Try recording your song and work on the instrumental parts and gradually let the words form through the music.

Finally, one piece of advice is always worth noting. Keep it simple.

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Best Songwriting Collaborations: Musicians and Lyricists

Best Songwriting Collaborations: Musicians and Lyricists

Writing songs can be a lonely process, which is why many musicians and writers seek out a collaborative partner to work with and gain feedback from.

It is interesting to find that some of the best music collaborations between musicians and lyricists occur with a degree of separation between the artists. Many songwriters working together find that locking themselves in the same room until the song is finished is not the best method.

The creative process needs time and space to realize its path, and the creators need room to breathe and accomplish their own perspective on the work. It’s not always straight forward, and a new song will usually go through several revisions before it is ready.

The celebrated partnership of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, who wrote a series of hits together including Walk On By, and Do You Know the Way to San Jose adopted a relaxed style of writing together, as Bacharach recalled:

“Our writing process was very interesting. We would sit in a room in the Brill Building and maybe Hal would have an idea — a couple of lines, a title — or I would have a music fragment. And we would go from there. It wasn't like we would sit in that room and finish a song. That never happened. Hal would take his story, get on the train, and go home to Roslyn out in Long Island. And I would take whatever music I had and go back to my apartment. Then we'd meet a day or two later, or maybe talk it through on the phone.”

For Elton John and Bernie Taupin, the process is shaped by the creative independence of the two collaborators, as Elton described in a mid-career interview:

“He writes the lyrics first and gives them to me, and then I write the songs for them. In the old days I would slice bits of verses out and cut things here and there – it’s not so bad now. But it’s always been lyrics first. Very, very rarely have I sometimes suggested a title for a song or maybe a melody. Don’t Go Breaking My Heart is the only one I can think of. It’s always a non-collaboration really: he gives me the lyric and I go away and write it without him hearing it, and then he hears it.”

Johnny Marr and Morrissey wrote a string of albums together for The Smiths over a five year period. Their method was to work closely together but to allow each other the freedom they needed to express themselves.

In a South Bank Show TV interview, Morrissy described his approach to penning lyrics: “How do I write those songs? I write them in a very natural way, but in a very detached way also. But not to say I simply sit down a guess, but it is very detached, which I think is also important because not everybody has fantastically endlessly romping private lives.”

In a later interview, Johnny Marr reflected on the integrity of the band’s musical approach: “We weren’t one of those bands who designed songs over a period with different producers or an A&R man. We were a bunch of young guys who were super-tight, very close, and isolated, who would get in a car or a van and go into the studio with just us and Stephen Street or sometimes John Porter. And we would just put our vibe, or our world, into the sound of the songs we’d written. It wasn’t music made by a committee or by the record company. We were left alone to do it ourselves, to get on with it and just do it. Whatever was going on with the group on a day-to-day basis was worked into the sound of the band.”

Not all songwriting partnerships achieved their best work by working apart. The writing partnership of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, which Johnny Marr described as a big influence on The Smiths, was built on a close collaboration, producing such hits as Hound Dog and Stand By Me. In a interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, Leiber and Stoller recalled their earliest songwriting sessions:

Leiber: We used to go to Mike's house, where the upright piano was. We went there every day and wrote. We worked ten, eleven, twelve hours a day.

Stoller: When we started working, we'd write five songs at a session. Then we'd go home, and we'd call each other up. "I've written six more songs!" "I've written four more." Our critical faculties, obviously, were not as developed and we just kept on writing and writing.

Leiber: "Hound Dog" took like twelve minutes. That's not a complicated piece of work. But the rhyme scheme was difficult. Also the metric structure of the music was not easy. "Kansas City" was maybe eight minutes, if that. Writing the early blues was spontaneous. You can hear the energy in the work.

Stoller: In the early days we'd go back and forth note for note, syllable for syllable, word for word in the process of creating.

Suggestions for other great song writing collaborations would be welcome.

See the full interview with Johnny Marr: http://www.avclub.com/articles/johnny-marr-has-no-negative-thoughts-about-the-smi,73276/

See the full interview Leiber and Stoller: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/leiber-stoller-rolling-stones-1990-interview-with-the-songwriting-legends-20110822

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Looking for Musicians to Play With?

Looking for Musicians to Play With?

5 tips to help develop fruitful music collaborations

 

1). Record yourself: If you’re a musician or a singer, you will almost certainly have a "style" all of your own. Your preferred tempo, your pitch, your technique and your playing approach will all contribute to your signature style. When looking for other musicians to work with, it’s good to let them hear what you do. Give them a taste of your flavour by making a recording of yourself and letting people hear it.
If you’ve been making music for some time, you’ve almost certainly got plenty of recordings you’ve already made. That doesn’t matter. It’s worthwhile making a new recording to capture your style as it sounds today. Just sit and play your best stuff. Afterwards, listen back to yourself and think about what would compliment you. Finding other musicians is about knowing yourself and understanding what you sound like. Think about what other musicians hear when they listen to your recordings.

2). Establish your ambitions: On the more practical side of things, it’s a good idea to know what you want from a musical collaboration. Do you want to play live gigs? Do you want to share the songwriting credits, or are you better when you write alone? Are you a “front-man” or “band-member”? All these questions will help establish the sort of musician you are looking for, and make the path to successful collaboration a smooth one.

3). Try collaborating at a distance: Nothing can quite match the feeling of making music with others in the same room, jamming and creating in the same spontaneous moment. But there are other ways. With the web, collaboration can take place over large distances. If you’re looking for a musician to play with, they needn’t live around the next block. I know a very talented, hands-on keyboardist who is currently enjoying a fertile collaboration with an electronic musician via email and Dropbox. They live miles apart, so if they are working on a track they simply pass it back and forth between them, each one adding a bit more each time. It works because it’s a pure exchange of music without egos getting in the way.
The other exciting thing about collaborating at a distance is that people from very diverse musical backgrounds can get together. What would your music sound like with a musician from Japan, Brazil, South Africa or Mexico playing with you?

4). Post you details: It goes without saying that the web is great place to make new contacts. You've probably searched through listings pages for adverts posted by other musicians, but why not post an avert yourself? There are plenty of free listings pages or forums where you can start talking about yourself and attracting attention. Here at Verse-Chorus, you can post an advert for free.

5). Don’t be afraid to try something new: To create new music is a leap into the unknown. Of course you’ve got to practice and hone your technique, but just as crucial in the mix is experimentation. It’s only by trying out new things that originality can prosper. So when looking for other musicians to work with, don’t be afraid to try new avenues. Be open to chance meetings, unusual collaborations, less traditional instrument combinations, that sort of thing. We've already mentioned the idea of collaborating with musicians from around the world. Alternatively you could try working with musicians from a musical background that is different to yours. Could you collaborate with a folk singer, or a punk musician, or someone into electronica? Try it, and see what happens.

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7 Ways to Start a Song

7 Ways to Start a Song

How do you start a song? What lyrical options are available? Here we come up with 7 suggestions on how you can get going with the art of songwriting.

1). Why not start with a statement about yourself, or a description about where you are in life, as Joni Mitchell does in "All I Want":

I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
traveling, traveling, traveling
Looking for something, what can it be?

2). Not a million miles away, start with a fact or a basic observation as Paul Simon's does in his song "Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes":

She’s a rich girl
She don’t try to hide it
Diamonds on the soles of her shoes

3). Why not try a line that sets the scene in more poetic terms, as Neil Young does in his song "Pocahontas", using the image of a winter night time to create an opening image:

Aurora borealis
The icy sky at night
Paddles cut the water
In a long and hurried flight

The Smiths song "This Charming Man" follows the same basic pattern:

Punctured bicycle
On a hillside desolate

4). Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)" starts with a more abstract description, perhaps best described as a mental state of affairs:

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go

5). Try starting with dialogue, as Paul Simon (again) uses in his song "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover":

“The problem is all inside your head”
She said to me.
“The answer is easy if you
Take it logically"

The same songwriter begins the opening verse to his song "America" with someone speaking:

“Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together
I’ve got some real estate here in my bag”
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner’s pies
And walked off to look for America

6). Alternatively you could begin by addressing another person, as Leonard Cohen does in his song "So Long Marianne",

Come over to the window my little darling, I'd like to try to read your palm,
I used to think I was some kind of gypsy boy until I let you take me home

7). How about starting your song with a description of another person, as Laura Marling does in her song "Goodbye England (Covered In Snow)"

You were so smart then,
in your jacket and coat.
My softest red scarf was warming your throat.

So there are 7 different ways to begin a song. Why not let us know your own ideas for kick-starting the opening verse.

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Five Cliches to Avoid in Writing Song Lyrics

Five Cliches to Avoid in Writing Song Lyrics

It doesn't take long for me to be put off a song once I hear a lyric which is both extremely familiar and utterly unoriginal. No matter how good the music is or how impressive the vocal performance might be, if the lyrics are sub-standard and full of clichés, the song cannot be regarded as anything more than average.

That said, I have spoken to many people who don't listen to the lyrics of a song and don't care what is being said as long as they like the melody or another aspect of the song. They simply let the words wash over them.

I find this hard to understand, since the story of the song plays a large part in my listening experience. It is at least 25% of the whole. Any discerning songwriter who wants to gain critical respect needs to focus on writing an honest and interesting lyric.

Below I have listed five clichés to avoid, the ones that seem to appear time and time again throughout songs over many generations. Of course, they were once original, and the writers should be commended rather than ridiculed. However those who just steal and reuse without any thought to their craft, should be laughed at.

1 The rhyming of fire and desire. I first heard this beauty in U2's song Desire. At the time it sounded like a good lyric, being my first experience of it. But in fact there were many many previous examples already out there and many more to come. Notable musical giants such as Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Michael Jackson and many others have all used it in one form or another. Most recently, Scissor Sisters went for the jugular multiple fire/desire rhyme chorus in their song Fire With Fire:

You said, "Fight fire with fire
Fire with fire
Fire with fire
Through desire, desire -sire, desire
Through your desire."

2. I don't know where I'm going but I know where I've been. Not only is this phrase completely overused, but it is often excruciating to hear. The line is often split in two, making the predictability of the second part painful to the ear. It is also such an obvious line as naturally everyone knows about their past and where they have been, but not many people can have exact knowledge of their future.

3. The break of dawn/day. I have heard this phrase across a range of genres and it's a phase I quite like, but once you hear it countless occasions, it loses its appeal rather quickly.

4. Fly/sky/high. This simple rhyme is very easy to come up with; in fact once you have a line containing the word 'fly', the first rhyming words you might think of would be sky or high. Yet very successful artists get away with it and their million selling songs don’t seem to suffer. R. Kelly's I Believe I Can Fly is a prime example and full of fly/sky combinations as well as equally nauseous lines like 'If I can see it, then I can do it' and 'If I just believe it, there's nothing to it'.

5 Down on my knees and begging you please. Again, over-used and often sung like it is an original line born from many hours of hard work.

There you have five examples of lyrical clichés to avoid.

For some inspiration, here's a great line from the Simon & Garfunkel song Homeward Bound: 'Like emptiness in harmony, I need someone to comfort me'.

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How Elton and Bernie met

How Elton and Bernie met

We built this website after being inspired by the story of Elton John and Bernie Taupin, who met after both replying to the same advert in the NME.

Liberty Records placed the ad back in 1967, calling for talent. Reg Dwight (Elton John), of the band Bluesology, responded and had an audition at the London office, only to be turned down by A&R man Ray Williams. He explained that he could write music, but not lyrics, so Williams handed over some poems by a guy named Bernie Taupin, another person who had responded to the advert.

Dwight was impressed with the words and contacted Taupin, and so began a songwriting partnership that would last for years. Elton would recieve lyrics from Bernie and try to build a melody around those he saw as having song potential. They started this way and have continued in this vien for their entire career.

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How to Write a Better Song

How to Write a Better Song

Writing a song is a very personal experience and the methods for doing may be different for each of us.

However, there are many aspects of songwriting that are common to everyone, it just depends on the order you do them in. This article gives you some helpful tips about what to think about.

Song structure

If you are an organised person, you may wish to set out the structure before you begin. As our website name suggests, a verse normally starts things off, followed by a chorus.

Where you go from here is totally up to you, but another verse and chorus combination is usually what comes next. This kind of template is used over and over again throughout western music, but it's by no means the only way to structure a song.

Other familiar templates include beginning with a hook (another name for a catchy section), this sets the tone for the song and can repeated later. The hook may then be followed by a couple of verses that give some detail to the song, before coming back to that familiar hook, which can be embellished this time round.

Often, there is a section called the bridge, which has a different feel to it. Perhaps an upbeat louder song may have a quieter section, or a laid-back track could have a more energetic part of the song. It should be placed near the end of the composition, before the big finish.

 

Lyrics

For some, lyrics are a very important part of the jigsaw. They tell a story and convey emotion. The question is, do you write down the lyrics first, or add them later?

My advice is to get something down on paper first, even it's just a verse. This helps you form a melody as you play around with different chord progressions. You will have tangible items in which to hang the tune from.

The lyrics should be simple to understand, intelligent, easy on the ear, and void of cliches.

Rhyming is a popular option and keeps the musicality of the song going, creating a good rhythm, but it's not always necessary. In fact, too many rhymes can end up predictable. Try rhyming in unusual places or with longer interesting words.

To get going, try starting with a fact or a truth. For example, 'I met her in a dark and crowded bar...'. It sets the initial scene and lets the listener in.

 

Melody

This is probably the most important part of any song, and also the hardest part to get right. It can make or break it.

To help you write a good melody, you need to have the backbone of a chord structure, created using a guitar or piano. If you can get this part sounding interesting, it will be a good start. Play this on a loop and experiment with different ways of singing your lyrics. Try to express yourself and don't stay within. To convey the emotion, you need to let it out.

A verse should have a calmer feel and create a sense of anticipation, building and building, until you reach the hook or chorus. This is where you need to find that piece of magic that makes the song what it is. There is no formula for this, you just have to keep trying until you find something that sounds right.

 

Composition

This is similar to song structure, but also includes how the lyrics and melody affect the overall feel and journey of the song. It's about the highs and lows and how they fit together. Variation is key to keeping the listener tuned in.

You also need to think about instrumention and how the different parts work. For example, do you want a long introduction, or get straight into the words? Should the drums and bassline come in after the first chorus, or before, or not at all? Should you include backing vocals?

As you can see, there's plenty of questions that need answering.

 

Inspiration

To help you grow as a songwriter, it's a good idea to analyse the music and songs you love best. Understanding how they are put together and why they sound so good is an importatnt step.

A worthwhile exercise is to recreate a track by making your own cover version. Look at all the parts that make up the song, move them around and play with the structure and melody.

 

Conclusion

Putting all the parts together needn't be difficult. Focus on the chords and melody. Get these right and gradually build up the other areas until a finished sound is formed.

The best things are created over time. Don't try to finish it in one session. It's a good idea to come back to your work after a nights sleep - it will give you a different perspective. Try new ideas, move things around. It will take time and effort to become a good songwriter so keep going and write as often as you can.

Be prepared to write many average songs before you write a good one. It all takes practice and you will get better and better over time.

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