How To Write Songs

Category: Generating Ideas for Lyrics

  • Lacking Motivation? Here’s How to Reignite Your Passion for Songwriting

    Lacking Motivation? Here’s How to Reignite Your Passion for Songwriting For many songwriters, a big question they ask themselves on a daily basis is “Should I even write songs if no one hears my work?” This common dilemma can lead to self-doubt, perfectionism, and ultimately, creative burnout.  Inspired by the transformative ideas in the book…

  • How to Write a Song – 5 Simple Steps

    How to Write a Song – 5 Simple Steps Have you ever struggled to turn your lyrical or melodic ideas into a complete song?  Whether you’re an experienced musician or just starting out, finishing a song can be one of the biggest challenges in the creative process. In this post, we break down how to…

  • The Zoom Method: Secrets to Better Lyrics Under 10 Minutes

    What does the classic Joni Mitchell song, ‘The River’ (1971) have in common with neo-RnB song ‘Super Rich Kids’ by Frank Ocean (2013)? These are 2 songs from wildly different artists, genres, and eras. And yet, when we look into the inner workings of how the lyrics deliver the ideas and emotion of the song,…

  • A Songwriter’s Main Struggle and How to Fix It

    Every songwriter has 2 main struggles: Struggle #1: To consistently make work you are proud of. Struggle #2: To have lots of people listen to and love your work. One of these is something we have immediate control over (hint, it’s #1!). Let’s look at the one we do have control over right now: consistently…

  • Songwriting is “Easy” According to John Lennon

    Songwriting is “Easy” According to John Lennon In a 1983 interview with Molly Meldrum, David Bowie talked about how much he admired John Lennon’s songwriting capabilities. He recalled a time when Lennon said to him, “It’s very easy…all you have to do is say what you mean, make it rhyme, and put a backbeat to…

  • The Secrets to Noel Gallagher’s Songwriting Success

    The Secrets to Noel Gallagher’s Songwriting Success Known to many as the primary songwriter, guitarist, and co-lead vocalist of British Rock band Oasis,  it’s undeniable that Noel Gallagher is one of the most prolific songwriters of his generation. As songwriters ourselves, it’s important that we take a step back to figure out the thought process…

  • The MAP Method – Finish Your Songs

    The MAP Method – Finish Your Songs Recently, I emailed the over 12,000 people on my email list, and asked them the question “What is your number one biggest challenge as a songwriter?”. After receiving hundreds of replies, we found that the most common problem songwriters have is finishing songs. In this article, we’ll discuss…

  • Songwriting prompt of the week

    Here is the 3rd (of 4) songwriting prompts for the Songwriting Groups I run (if you want more info on the groups, please check it out here). I’m sharing the prompts here so anyone can join in (though of course, if you want the community, the deadline, and the feedback, jump into a group!). Here…

  • Top 5 Songwriting Exercises for Coming Up With Great Song Ideas: #5—Chorus Writing Prompts

    What a Chorus is not I have some important news about a Chorus—news that took me way too long to properly understand: If I had realized this a little sooner in my songwriting career, it would have saved me 10 years of learning the hard way. One other thing that the Chorus is NOT: Thinking…

  • Songwriting Prompt of the Week

    Today is the second fortnight of the Songwriting Groups I run (if you want more info on the groups, please check it out here). Here, I’m sharing the prompt from today, as it is a little more unusual than the prompts I normally send. [The prompts I normally send for Songwriting Group are short phrases,…

  • Free eBook: The 14-Day Songwriting Challenge

    Get a free copy of the 14-Day Songwriting Challenge—a series of daily writing prompts designed to take less than 30 minutes, and to focus your creative energy.

  • Top 5 Exercises for Coming Up With Great Song Lyric Ideas: #4—Metaphor Sense Writing

    Metaphor Sense Writing is a combination of Exercise #1 (Sense Writing) and #2 (Metaphor Collisions). It’s a way to take a novel combination of ideas—the sun is a bride; aging is a church (for example)—and expand the connection between the two ideas, filling it with rich language that furrows into the rabbit hole of the…

  • 20 Songwriting Prompts

    Wanna know how to write a song? Start with one of these 20 songwriting prompts that will kickstart your creativity and fuel your songwriting on any given day. And a huge THANK YOU to the 20,000 subscribers of our YouTube channel who have supported us, inspired us, and contributed so generously to our growing community…

  • 14-Day Songwriting Challenge: DAY 4

    #4. Listen deeply. This task is excerpted from the wonderful book, ‘The Art of Noticing,’ by Rob Walker: “The composer Pauline Oliveros was known, among other things, for a practice she called deep listening. This evolved in part from her experience performing with a couple of other musicians in an abandoned cistern in the state…

  • 14-Day Songwriting Challenge: DAY 3

    #3. A list. This poem is unbelievable. Listen to it, the whole way through (listen to the recording here as well as reading it. The experience is beautiful.) Now: write a list of things you like.  Get a free copy of the 14-Day Songwriting Challenge eBook

  • 14-Day Songwriting Challenge: DAY 1

    #1. Getting past the rust. Write literally the most cliched lyric you can think of. Really squeeze that juice. Just write the most trashy, obvious, cliched thing you can muster. String together cliches. Write the cheesiest love song you can. Google “cliches you should avoid”, and then unavoid them. Aim for a Verse and Chorus.…

  • Top 5 Exercises for Coming Up with Great Song Lyric Ideas—#3: Twisting Cliches

    Clichés are everywhere.  They are encoded into the way we think and express ourselves in such a pervasive way that we simply don’t notice they’re there. Yet there they are, when you’re feeling “under the weather,” or if someone “paints you a picture” of dinner last night; when you’re just “killing time,” or perhaps instead…

  • Top 5 Exercises for Coming Up with Great Song Lyric Ideas—#2: Metaphor Collisions

    This exercise is one of my all-time favorites. It is the fastest way to show yourself that you are capable of coming up with totally original, unique ideas and ways to express yourself that no one has ever uttered before. More importantly, this exercise trains your brain to see the world like a songwriter—to make…

  • Top 5 Exercises for Coming Up With Great Song Lyric Ideas—#1: Sense Writing.

    In this series, I’ll go through my all-time Top 5 Exercises for generating lyric ideas, whether I’ve got a song idea going already or not.  These exercises don’t require inspiration. They mostly require 10 minutes and a pen. Just like anything in life, you can get better at writing great lyrics with practice. I hope…

  • Why the title of your song is so important

    When we are talking about ‘ideas’ in songs, it’s helpful to draw this distinction: There is the ‘big idea’ – the broad story, experience, or concept we want to write about. What Jimmy Webb is talking about here is when the BIG IDEA becomes a SONG IDEA. What’s the difference? A SONG IDEA isn’t just…

Weekend Songwriting Intensive - January 4-5

Ignite 2025 with an immersive weekend of songwriting, led by Keppie and Benny.