Tag: lyric writing
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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
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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.…
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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…
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Writing better lyrics with metaphor magic
In this video, I show you how to write songs—and specifically lyrics—like Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, and John Mayer. There is a particular type of song and songwriting that these three songwriters have in common—it’s a way to write songs that lots of songwriters use: metaphor songs. I start by defining metaphor, and share the…
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Mastering the Elements of Lyric Writing
Studying and understanding the tools that go into making a song can help anyone learn how to write a song more effectively. I hope these conversations give you ideas for your own songs and songwriting. We were lucky enough to have a long conversation with Berklee Professor Pat Pattison. But was my teacher and mentor…
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6 Songs That Taught Us How to Write Songs
One of the best ways to learn how to write great songs is to learn from great songs and songwriters. In this video, songwriter Ben Romalis and I take 6 songs that each taught us a crucial principle or technique about writing great songs. Drawing from a range of inspirations from Radiohead, Tom Waits, to…
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Examples of Sense Writing
The first exercise I run in any lyric writing class is called ‘Sense Writing,’ which is essentially the same as Pat Pattison’s Object Writing (which you can find out more about here). I’ve written before about Sense Writing, and recently put out a YouTube video that explains it, which you can watch here: It’s one…
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Getting to Great Chorus Lyrics
A great chorus is more than just the bit where the lyrics repeat. This video dives deep into the craft of finding and writing great chorus lyrics. We look at what a great choruses really do (beyond merely repeating), and look deeply at one of the most important concepts in great chorus writing: RECOLOURING. We…
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George Saunders, Janis Ian, and Paul Simon—Where Meaning Comes From in Story
In a recent newsletter by one of my favourite writers, George Saunders, he writes of one of his characters in a short story, The Falls: “A story has a surface dimension (let’s call it the overstory) and another, deeper, dimension (the understory). The overstory, in this case, is whether Morse will save the girls. That’s…