When I was 24, I took a song of mine, ‘Waiting for the Avalanche,’ to a music industry conference— specifically a panel of music supervisors (the people responsible for sourcing and securing the rights to use songs in film and tv). I got the chance to play them this song. One of them said the following, and I’ll never forget it:
“This is a beautiful song…but totally unusable in tv…”
Today, we’re going to talk about 5 crucial differences between songs that are ‘good’, and songs that are usable in film and tv (and at the end, I’ll tell you which one my song failed at!).
Before we get into it, I want to let you know about a workshop we held, made for songwriters interested in the world of writing songs for film and tv:
In this 90 minute workshop (followed by Q&A), award-nominated songwriter Sophia Christopher will discuss the process of working with producers, directors, and writers, working to a specific creative brief, and the process of writing songs for film from draft to completion.
This workshop is available to watch exclusively for Premium members of our HTWS Songwriter membership Community.
5 Things to Know About Writing Songs for Film & TV
1. Avoid specific names, times, places, and events.
The vast majority of songs that get placed into film and tv are there to support the emotion, mood, and energy of the scene, or the transition from one scene to another. The song itself is there in service of whatever’s happening on screen. Another way to say this? Your song is not the thing telling the story – that’s the movie’s job! Your song is there to support how the viewer should be feeling about whatever’s going on. So any lyrics that start to ‘tell story’ will start to interfere with the visual. In almost 100% of film/tv pitch briefs you will see, there will be the above phrase: “avoid reference to specific names, places, times, and events”.
If your song lyric opens with “It’s 6am on a Saturday”, and it is 6am on a Saturday in the film…your lyric is too ‘on the nose’. And if it’s 4pm on a Wednesday? Your song is confusing and unusable.
2. The song’s music should evoke a clear mood or emotion.
For the same reason as above, your song is acting in the role of musical ‘score’—the music itself should evoke a clear emotional tone, or a clear mood or energy. A good test of this is if, when you mute the vocals and there is no lyric or melody, the instrumental track alone still conveys a clear mood or emotion. Often starting with a clear sense of the emotion you want to convey with the music alone is a great way to make sure the lyrics and music are both aligning around that singular goal.
3. The hook should be clear, simple, and stand alone.
Not only should the instrumental track ‘theoretically’ convey the core emotion, but in practice, there will always be a music editor on the film production team whose job it is to cut your song into the scene, and make sure a) that it fits the timing of the scene (which might sometimes mean that your 3:14 song is cut to be 45 seconds long), and b) that the lyrics aren’t interfering with the dialogue.
This often means turning down, or even muting, the lyrics to much of the song, so that the music itself is acting as the score to the scene.
It also means that the hook of your song should not rely on the other lyrics to make sense. In this world, making sure your hook or title clear, simple, and repeating it, is a great way to make sure it stands a chance of being optimally usable in this context.
4. Songs that are dynamically less varied are more usable!
It might seem to defy common sense that a song with less going on dynamically would be more optimal for film and tv placement, but once again, in this world, the song is a servant to something greater. Unless it’s a ‘featured’ placement, the song is creating mood, vibe, and texture.
The result? Often songs that have less dynamic melodies, less contrast from one section to the next, and fewer moments that call attention to themselves (think quirky rhythmic fills, or attention-grabbing synth stabs…) will be more usable—they set the vibe, and maintain.
5. Clearly ‘sounding like’ a well-known artist is a plus.
We all like to think of ourselves as totally unique. Unclassifiable. Incomparable. And while that may be true (in the most literal sense, there really is no one like you), success in this world is so often driven by the fact that the director or producer of a film or tv show wanted to use a specific song, let’s say “Don’t Know Why” by Norah Jones, but cannot afford the many, many thousands of dollars it would cost to license that song…
What do they do next? They put a call out (or look in song catalogues) for songs that ‘sound like’ that song or artist. This means: songs that are easy to index are easy to find. And if your song can be found, it can be placed.
(When I finally had a song successfully placed into a major network tv show, Hawaii 5.0, it was not because it was my ‘best song’, it was because it was clearly a song that could happily be in a playlist with Norah Jones).
So which one of these did I fail at the first time?
#1 – specific time/place/event. The opening verse of my song was:
Specific people. Specific event. Unusable.
I hope you learn from my mistakes, but also encourage you to learn from people who are doing it successfully everyday.
To watch our workshop with Cannes-featured songwriter Sophia Christopher, join our HTWS Songwriter Community now, and get in on the conversation.
Hope to see you songwriting soon,
🌺 Keppie
PS – You can hear the ‘unusable’ song (which was also produced by John Mayer – yes, ‘the’ John Mayer) here. And you can hear the song that was placed here!
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