Tag / writing lyrics

by Veronica Tan

5 Easy Songwriting Exercises to Improve Your Lyrics

5 Easy Songwriting Exercises to Improve Your Lyrics

Are you tired of writing lyrics you don’t love? Maybe you constantly listen to your favourite songs, wondering how they wrote such amazing lines. In this article, we’ll discuss 5 incredibly powerful exercises for turning your ideas into lyrical gold.

This article is a summarised transcript of our video “5 Simple Songwriting Exercises to Transform Your Lyrics”. Click here to watch the video for more details, explanations and examples.

Exercise #1: Extending Metaphors

Metaphors are a songwriter’s best friend. They allow you to describe one thing through the lens of another, creating rich and vivid imagery. But the true magic happens when you extend a metaphor.

Take the example: “Anger is a storm.” Instead of stopping there, spend time expanding on this metaphor. Describe how anger darkens your thoughts like gathering storm clouds, how your words become lightning, and your voice, thunder. The goal is to paint a detailed picture for your listeners. You don’t have to use every line you come up with – just pick out the best bits.

The reason this works is because listeners get a large amount of dopamine from having to connect the two ideas in a metaphor. This then makes them invested in the song’s story. A great example of metaphor can be found in Ani DiFranco’s song “School Night”.

Here’s how you can practice extending metaphors:

  1. Come up with 5 different metaphors. You can use a random word generator such as this to help you come up with your combinations.
  2. Spend 5 to 10 minutes extending the metaphor, making sure you use words, phrases and images that are related to the metaphor image. For example, the metaphor image in the metaphor “jealousy is a kitchen” would be the word “kitchen”.

Listening to songs with great metaphors is also a great way to improve your usage of metaphor. Some other examples of songs with amazing metaphors are “Golden” by Jill Scott, “Circle Games” by Joni Mitchell and “Take Me to Church” by Hozier.

To learn more about how to write great lyrics, download this free PDF eBook on “The 5 Best Songwriting Exercises for Writing Great Lyrics”:

Exercise #2: Upgrading Verbs

Verbs are the powerhouse of language. They convey action, mood, tone, and emotion. Unlike adjectives and adverbs, which can weaken your lyrics, strong verbs add depth and resonance to your words. Jeff Tweedy – author of the book “How to Write One Song” – says “You don’t need to say ‘The dog barked loudly’. Loudly is implied. And adding it actually weakens the bark”.

Famous author Stephen King has also said “The road to hell is paved with adverbs”. An example of the power of verbs in practice, would be to consider alternatives like “she slid into the room,” “she slithered into the room,” or “she flowed into the room.”, instead of saying, “She walked into the room,”. Each verb choice evokes a different mood and image.

Phoebe Bridgers shows us how to use verbs very well in her song “Motion Sickness”.

Here’s how you can practice extending verbs:

  1. Go through the lyrics for any of the songs that you’re currently working on, and cross out all adjectives and adverbs unless they absolutely have to be there. For example, the word “red” in the line “track suits and red wine movies for two” is necessary but you wouldn’t need to say “floral red wine”.
  2. Underline all the verbs that you’ve used in your lyrics.
  3. Pick one verb per section and upgrade that verb to something more interesting.

Exercise #3: Use Specific Imagery

Stephen King has said “Good description usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand in for everything else”. This is even more true for song because we have limited real-estate available to create entire images in our listener’s minds. 

The line “I find my glasses and you turn the light out” from Amanda Palmer’s song “The Bed Song” demonstrates this very well. It paints a vivid picture of two people living in the same space but somehow not being on the same page, because they’re both doing different things. If you want to learn more about imagery, check out this video here.

Here’s how you can practice using specific imagery:

  1. Take a line of lyric you’ve written that you can identify as more telling than showing or more general rather than specific.
  2. Spend 5 minutes and try to invert that line so that it shows more than tells. For example, instead of saying “It was a beautiful, normal Sunday afternoon”, describe how the leaves looked swaying in the wind or how the BBQ smelt on the breeze.

Exercise #4: Contrasts

There is something very compelling when we combine opposing concepts together in the same line of lyric. By juxtaposing opposing concepts such as day and night, good and bad, or hot and cold, you create tension that captivates your listeners.

A spectacular example of a song that uses contrasts is “She Burns” by Foy Vance. The constant use of opposites such as “Hot and cold”, and “Frozen and burning”, serves to amplify the hook of the song, which is “She Burns”.

Exercise #5: Power Positions

The first and last line of any section in a song will naturally command more attention from your listeners. So, it’s important that we really use these two lines to their fullest extent, and maximise the impact that they have. 

To do this, we’re going to use a technique that I call the “last line pivot”. Let’s take a look at the following section from Joni Mitchell’s song “River”:

It’s coming on Christmas

They’re cutting down trees

They’re putting up reindeer

And singing songs of joy and peace

Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on

The last line of that section creates so much surprise because prior to that, there was so much Christmas imagery – which is normally associated with positivity. But the last line subverts the listener’s expectations of positivity, and keeps them interested in learning more of the story.

Here is two ways you can practice making the most of your song’s power positions:

  1. Stack images that describe something – whether that’s a feeling, event or experience. Then, use that last line to pivot the narrative. 
  2. Alternatively, you could reverse engineer your section by starting with your last line. This way, you can think about what the target is and write the opposite of that for the rest of the section.

Conclusion: 5 Easy Songwriting Exercises to Improve Your Lyrics

Writing good lyrics takes a lot of practice, and is a source of frustration for many songwriters. By using these techniques, you can help ease this process through providing yourself with a set structure and method to think through during the lyric writing process.

If you would like more details, explanations and examples, then be sure to check out the video now.

Level up your songwriting with five radically practical exercises used by professional songwriters around the world:

by Veronica Tan

Part 1 of The Songwriting Formula – The Concept

Part 1 of The Songwriting Formula – The Concept

A common complaint that many songwriters have is that they’re unable to finish their songs. You can easily avoid this by ensuring that you have a clear concept before trying to develop your song idea. In this article, we’ll talk about how having a concept is the first step in the songwriting process.

This article is a summarised transcript of part one of our video “The Simple Songwriting Formula that Changed Everything for Me”. Click here to watch the video for more details, explanations and examples.

What is a Concept?

In the case of songwriting, a concept refers to having a general idea of what you want to write. Famous songwriter Jimmy Webb provides a great example in his book “June Smith”, as follows:

“I want to write a song about someone who goes through acute mood swings from euphoria to emotional exhaustion. I love this person and want to address the song to him.”

A song concept can also just be an interesting angle of approach. For example, “I want to write a love song about a person I want to marry but I’m going to address the song to the person’s father who’s refusing to let me propose.

By establishing your concept, it will help you when you’re writing your song map later on in the last step of the process. 

In the meantime, click here to download a free PDF song map template that will help you finish every song you start:

A Song Concept Isn’t a Song Idea

It’s important to note that having a song concept is not the same as having a song idea. In order for a concept to be an idea, you require a title.

To follow up on the previous excerpt from Jimmy Webb’s book “June Smith”, the songwriter said the following:

“If, however, you add the following sentence: ‘I want to call the song Problem Child,’ then you have an ‘idea,’ even though the song may not end up being called ‘Problem Child’”.

Conclusion: Part 1 of The Songwriting Formula – The Concept

It’s important for us to establish our concept during the songwriting process. This allows us to have a solid base upon which to build our song. In addition, it also ensures that we don’t lack a sense of direction in our songwriting.

This is only the first of three parts of our songwriting formula. Check out the full article for all 3 parts or watch the video here now.

Level up your songwriting with five radically practical exercises used by professional songwriters around the world:

by Veronica Tan

Flip Method #6 – Pairing

Flip Method #6 – Pairing

Clichés are great. They’re relatable, well-known and convey what we need to in a short and sweet way. However, because of all these same traits, they can also come off as dull and overused. In this blog post, we take a look at pairing – a method to flip around clichés to turn them into something new.

This article is a summarised transcript of the sixth and final part of our video “The Crazy Easy Trick to Write Great Lyrics (The Flip Method)’’. Click here to watch the video for more details, explanations and examples.

What is Pairing?

Pairing requires us to think of clichés as predictable word pairings instead of just famous phrases that we know. Some examples are “Hot and cold”, “Soft and hard” or “Up and down”. These are all pairings that very much make sense, as we’ve learnt them since we were children.

Predictable pairings need not be confined to only images. We could also use predictable rhyme pairings such as “Pain and rain”, “Love and above” and “Fire and desire”. The pairing method involves replacing a part of the predictable phrase with a different word, so as to create new and unexpected pairings in the process. So, for example, replace the word “Cold” in “Hot and cold” with something else.

If you’d like to experiment with this method, you can download this free PDF eBook entitled “The 5 Best Songwriting Exercises for Writing Great Lyrics”:

How to Practice Pairing

Take a phrase such as “If you are a bird, then I am the ___”. Then, fill in the blank with ten different kinds of words. 

At the start of this exercise, you might come up with predictable words to fill in the blank with, such as “Wind”, “Sky” or “Clouds”. However, this isn’t a problem as it’s good to get the more predictable words out the way first, so that we can come up with more creative and interesting pairings later.

As an example, a cool word we can fill in the blank with is the word “Rifle”, to form the phrase “If you are a bird, then I am the rifle”. This paints a picture of a sort of toxic relationship between two people, as one exists to the detriment of the other. In fact, this line is actually used in a song called “The Bird and The Rifle” by Lori McKenna.

Conclusion: Flip Method #6 – Pairing

Crafting great lyrics takes time, effort and practice. Although it requires some extra thought from us, it’s still important to use the methods we’ve learnt such as pairing, to create lyrics that are both distinct and relatable.

This is the last of six flip methods that we’ve come up with. Check out the full article for all 6 methods or watch the video here now.

And if you’re interested in more ideas, tools, techniques, and inspiration for your lyric writing make sure to check out this playlist that we have made just for you

Level up your songwriting with five radically practical exercises used by professional songwriters around the world:

by Veronica Tan

Flip Method #5 – Swapping

Flip Method #5 – Swapping

So many songwriters default to clichés when they write their lyrics. This is completely understandable – after all, clichés are well-known and relatable. However, they are also uninteresting and stale. In this blog post, we’ll discuss a simple technique we call “Swapping”, that can be used to create new phrases from old clichés.

This article is a summarised transcript of the fifth part of our video “The Crazy Easy Trick to Write Great Lyrics (The Flip Method)’’. Click here to watch the video for more details, explanations and examples.

What is Swapping?

Swapping is when we take a cliché or idiom that has two words or images in it, and actually swap their positions. This method relies on finding clichés that actually make sense when you swap them around.

If you’d like to experiment with this method, you can download this free PDF eBook entitled “The 5 Best Songwriting Exercises for Writing Great Lyrics”:

Examples of Swapping

Let’s have a look at the cliché “There’s no time like the present.” If we swap around the words “Present” and “Time”, we instead get the phrase “There’s no present like time”. Whilst the original cliché refers to how we should live in the moment, the swapped one instead implies how precious time is.

Another interesting cliché we could look at swapping is “Storm in a teacup”, which means a great outrage or excitement over a trivial matter. This can be swapped around to “Teacup in a storm”. The swapped version of the cliché paints for us a picture of someone who is able to maintain their calm no matter the situation. However, because we’re already acquainted with the original cliché, it still feels relatable despite meaning something entirely different.

Conclusion: Flip Method #5 – Swapping

Swapping is a really creative technique that can allow us to entirely change the meaning of clichés whilst still maintaining a semblance of their original form. This not only challenges our listeners to think differently about things, but also helps us find ways we never imagined to express ourselves with.

This is only the fifth of six flip methods that we’ve come up with. Check out the full article for all 6 methods or watch the video here now.

And if you’re interested in more ideas, tools, techniques, and inspiration for your lyric writing make sure to check out this playlist that we have made just for you

Turn your inspiration into beautiful songs with step-by-step guidance through two professional songwriting methods. By the end of this course, not only will your tool belt be stocked; you’ll have a plan and a method for finishing your songs – all of them:

by Veronica Tan

Flip Method #3 – Extending

Flip Method #3 – Extending

Clichés are well-known and relatable. In fact, that’s a large part of the reason that we as songwriters even use them. However, because they’re so well-known, they’re also often stale and overused. In this blog post, we’ll talk about how to add depth to your clichés by extending them.

This blog post aims to summarise the third part of our video “The Crazy Easy Trick to Write Great Lyrics (The Flip Method)’’. Click here to watch the video for more details, explanations and examples.

What is Extending?

The process of extending clichés involves taking a familiar expression and adding new words or images that are directly related to the original idea. For example, consider the cliché expression “The conversation flowed.” By doubling down on water imagery, we can extend the cliché and instead say “As the conversation flowed, I started to drown in the undercurrent of everything I didn’t understand.” This not only reinforces the water imagery but also subverts the expected meaning of the cliché.

Even a short extension could help shed new light on an old cliché. We could say “The conversation flowed like honey.” Instead of conjuring up smooth, easy dialogue, we now envision a slow, drawn-out exchange that oozes with depth and complexity. By extending clichés, songwriters can challenge a listener’s assumptions, thus keeping them engaged and intrigued.

If you’d like to experiment with this method further, you can download this free PDF eBook entitled “The 5 Best Songwriting Exercises for Writing Great Lyrics”:

How to Practice Extending

In order to practice this, you could Google search the term “Common clichés”, and see what comes up. Then pick a cliché and try to extend it.

As an example, we could pick the cliché “Ate our words”. Instantly when we see this phrase, we make a connection between eating, food and being hungry. Then, we could extend it by saying something like “We were so hungry we ate our words”. This way, we would have created completely new meaning out of a very familiar phrase.

Examples of Extending

An amazing example of extending is Joni Mitchell’s song “Case of You”. The following are some of the lyrics from the chorus:

“You’re in my blood like holy wine
Tastes so bitter and so sweet
I could drink a case of you darling
And still be on my feet”.

By saying she could drink a “Case of you”, she extends on the idea that she thinks of this person like alcohol. Not only that, but she also implies how in love she is with them by saying she would still be on her feet after drinking a case of them. In actuality, it’s impossible to drink a case of any alcohol and still stay standing.

Another artist who is great at doing this, is Taylor Swift. In her song “All Too Well”, she says the line “We were a masterpiece until you tore it all up”. At first, she says that “We were a masterpiece”, which is just a cliché way of saying that something was beautiful or amazing. Then, she extends on this by saying “Until you tore it all up”, which then paints a picture of someone entirely destroying something, implying that the relationship ended badly because of them.

Conclusion: Flip Method #3 – Extending

Clichés don’t have to be entirely avoided. If we instead use them as launchpads and practice extending them, we’ll be able to provide so much more meaning to our songs, thus making them far more memorable to our listeners.

This is only the third of six flip methods that we’ve come up with. Check out the full article for all 6 methods or watch the video here now.

And if you’re interested in more ideas, tools, techniques, and inspiration for your lyric writing make sure to check out this playlist that we have made just for you.

Turn your inspiration into beautiful songs with step-by-step guidance through two professional songwriting methods. By the end of this course, not only will your tool belt be stocked; you’ll have a plan and a method for finishing your songs – all of them:

by Veronica Tan

Study Your Heroes

Study Your Heroes

The importance of studying your heroes is often overlooked by most when learning the art of songwriting. Through this blog post, you will learn why studying your heroes is important, as well as how to use what you’ve learnt from them in your own writing.

This blog post aims to summarise the last part of our video ‘New to Songwriting? Start here (3 tips)’’. Click here to watch the video for more details, explanations and examples.

What to Look For

Merely learning how to play your favourite songs is a great start to your songwriting journey, but that doesn’t mean you should stop there. You also need to actively pick them apart and observe why the songwriters make the choices that they do. Examples of aspects which are useful to analyse in particular, are chord progressions and melodies.

To illustrate this, let’s have a look at the song “Someone Like You” by Adele.

By observing the chord progression of the song, we can see that she avoids the tonic chord in the pre-chorus of the song. This makes sense, as it’s the job of the pre-chorus to build tension. Through only bringing back the home chord in the chorus, Adele really makes it bloom and stand out. 

In addition, if you learnt to sing the song or picked apart its melody, you’ll find that she never sings a note in her verses that’s higher than the first note of the chorus. She does hit a high note later on again in the chorus in order to build it up, but she never allows the melody notes of the verse to go higher than the chorus. This helps build anticipation and really put a spotlight on the chorus.

This active process of taking things apart and putting them back together allows us to grasp the components that make a song unique and memorable.

You can find out more about other exercises to improve your songwriting in the free PDF ebook, “The 5 Best Songwriting Exercises for Writing Great Lyrics.” Click on the image to download:

Turn Imitation into Emulation

After analysing songs from your heroes, it’s important to graduate from imitation into emulation. This entails not only mimicking the surface aspects of our heroes’ work but also seeking to understand their thinking and perspective. In short, we should not seek to merely look like our heroes, but instead seek to see like our heroes do.

As we embrace their artistic mindset, we begin to cross-pollinate ideas from various songs and generate our own unique artistic voice. 

If you’re interested in looking for some specific examples on how we can emulate instead of just imitate, then check out our video entitled ‘6 Ways to Steal Great Chord Progressions’

Conclusion: Study Your Heroes

Becoming a great songwriter is a process that requires lots of determination, hard work and persistence. Studying your heroes is one of the great ways you can improve your songwriting, and ensure you get closer to your vision of your creative aesthetic.

This is the last of three tips that we have for beginner songwriters. Check out the full article that outlines all 3 tips, or check out the video now.

Level up your songwriting with five radically practical exercises used by professional songwriters around the world.

by Veronica Tan

Flip Method #2 – Magnifying

Flip Method #2 – Magnifying

Consider the commonly known cliché “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend”. It’s very relatable because it’s known so well, but at the same time, that makes it predictable. And when something is predictable, it becomes boring. In this blog post, we’re going to discuss another method we can use to flip clichés, that is known as magnifying.

This blog post aims to summarise the second part of our video “The Crazy Easy Trick to Write Great Lyrics (The Flip Method)’’. Click here to watch the video for more details, explanations and examples.

What is Magnifying?

Magnifying a cliché involves focusing on a particular aspect or detail rather than using the cliche itself. This creative technique allows you to shed new light on familiar themes, thereby allowing your lyrics to resonate with listeners in unexpected ways.

If we listen to Roxy Music’s 1975 hit song titled “Love Is the Drug”, we can hear the line “Love is the drug and I need to score”. When we magnify a cliché, we don’t just outright say the line “Love is the drug”. Instead, we expand further on things like what kind of drug, what the drug does to us and how we feel our relationship with this drug is.

If you’d like to experiment with this method further, you can download this free PDF eBook entitled “The 5 Best Songwriting Exercises for Writing Great Lyrics”:

An Example of Magnifying

An amazing example of magnifying can be heard in Lorde’s song titled “Writer in The Dark”.

In this song, she uses the line “I still feel you now and then slow like pseudoephedrine”. Through this, Lorde is magnifying the love-is-a-drug metaphor in a unique way. Not only does she tell us specifically what kind of drug it is, but she also tells us the effect that the drug has on her. 

By choosing pseudoephedrine instead of a glamorous drug like cocaine, it shows how she feels about their relationship, and paints this picture of her trying to recover from a fairly inane thing.

Conclusion: Flip Method #2 – Magnifying

Magnifying clichés presents a powerful tool for creating depth and originality in songs. By zooming in on specific details, songwriters can avoid clichés and instead write lyrics that stand out while being relatable.

This is only the second of six flip methods that we’ve come up with. Check out the full article for all 6 methods or watch the video here now.

And if you’re interested in more ideas, tools, techniques, and inspiration for your lyric writing make sure to check out this playlist that we have made just for you

Level up your songwriting with five radically practical exercises used by professional songwriters around the world

by Veronica Tan

Flip Method #1 – Replacing

Flip Method #1 – Replacing

Clichés are convenient ways to express ourselves but because they’re so well known, they can make our writing sound mundane and unoriginal. That’s why in this blog post, we’ll be going through a technique called replacing, which will help you freshen up those old clichés you might be tempted to default to in your songwriting.

This blog post aims to summarise the first part of our video “The Crazy Easy Trick to Write Great Lyrics (The Flip Method)’’. Click here to watch the video for more details, explanations and examples.

What is Replacing?

Before we can use this method, we must first identify clichés with a replaceable element. The key is to retain the beginning of the cliche, allowing the listener’s mind to anticipate the expected ending. However, instead of fulfilling that expectation, we replace the expected ending of the cliché with an unexpected one.

For example, when we think of the sentence “They fight like ___”, our mind automatically fills in the blank with “Cats and dogs” to form the cliché “They fight like cats and dogs”. With this method, we replace the phrase “Cats and dogs” with anything else to create an element of surprise.

If you’d like to experiment with this method further, you can download this free PDF eBook entitled “The 5 Best Songwriting Exercises for Writing Great Lyrics”:

Ways to Replace

Now that you’ve understood the concept of replacing, you can start to experiment with it in different ways. One way is to replace the phrase with something entirely unexpected. For instance, you could take the cliché “Time heals all wounds” and replace it with “Time dances with rainbows.” The unexpected coupling of “time” and “rainbows” not only adds a vivid visual but also infuses the lyric with a touch of whimsy and wonder.

Another way to go about it, is to incorporate wordplay and puns into the cliché.By twisting words in unexpected ways, you’ll create a delightful playfulness to your lyrics. For instance, consider the cliche “The apple of my eye.” By flipping it with “The apple of my sky,” you craft a charming wordplay that brings a smile to the listener’s face.

An Example of Replacing

In the song “Wild” by John Legend, the hook he uses is “I wanna drive you wild, wild, wild”. 

Normally, when we think of the phrase “I wanna drive you ___”, our mind automatically fills in the blank with the word “Crazy”. However, John Legend replaces “Crazy” with “Wild” instead. This creates a sense of familiarity in the hook but at the same time makes it stand out, and be memorable for the listener.

Conclusion: Flip Method #1 – Replacing

In short, replacing is an easy method to help pull you away from the dullness of clichés. By maintaining a sense of familiarity with your phrases, but surprising people with something new, you can ensure that your lyrics stick in the minds of your listeners.

This is only the first of six flip methods that we’ve come up with. Check out the full article for all 6 methods or watch the video here now.

And if you’re interested in more ideas, tools, techniques, and inspiration for your lyric writing make sure to check out this playlist that we have made just for you

Turn your inspiration into beautiful songs with step-by-step guidance through two professional songwriting methods. By the end of this course, not only will your tool belt be stocked; you’ll have a plan and a method for finishing your songs – all of them.

by Veronica Tan

How to Write Your Best Lyrics: The Flip Method

Explaining the Flip Method

Tired of your lyrics? Can’t seem to create anything that sounds interesting or original? Well you’re in luck because this blog post is all about helping you break free of cliched lyrics so you can start writing better songs!
This blog post aims to summarise our video “The Crazy Easy Trick to Write Great Lyrics (The Flip Method)’’. Click here to watch the video for more details, explanations and examples.

Flip Method #1: Replacing

The first flip method involves finding clichéd expressions that contain easily replaceable words or images. The trick is to use a familiar cliché that triggers a predictable response, like “we fight like cats and dogs.” Now, instead of using cats and dogs, swap out the phrase with anything else.

Some examples are: “We fight like rust and rain.”, “We fight like tree roots and concrete.”, or “We fight like secrets and loose lips”. This creates an element of surprise while still tapping into the familiar meaning of the cliché.

An example of this is in the song “Wild” by John Legend. In it, he uses the hook “I wanna drive you wild, wild, wild”. Normally, the cliché line that most people know is “You drive me crazy”.

Flip Method #2: Magnifying

Magnifying clichés means zooming in on a specific detail within the expression and elaborating on it. Cliché metaphors like “Love is a drug” are plain and simple but have been done to death by most songwriters. Rather than using it as is, avoid the cliché and magnify it by focusing on specific details related to the concept. 

If you listen to Lorde’s song Writer in The Dark, you’ll hear the line “I still feel you now and then slow like pseudoephedrine”. Through this, she not only avoids the cliché word “Drug”, but adds detail to the nature of her relationship by specifying the kind of drug and the effect it has on her.

To explore these concepts further, click here to download a free PDF eBook entitled “The 5 Best Songwriting Exercises for Writing Great Lyrics”:

Flip Method #3: Extending

In this strategy, we take a common cliché and extend or elaborate on it by introducing new words or images related to the cliché. 

For example, instead of saying, “the conversation flowed,” you could write, “as the conversation flowed, I started to drown in the undercurrent of everything I didn’t understand.” By extending the cliché, you use the cliché as a launchpad to create a more interesting line that goes against the expected meaning of the cliché.

The song “Case of You” by Joni Mitchell has a wonderful example of extending. The chorus goes like this: 

“You’re in my blood like holy wine
Tastes so bitter and so sweet
I could drink a case of you darling
And still be on my feet”.

The last two lines of the verse extend on the idea that she’s really in love with this person, by implying she could drink a case of them and still be on her feet. The meaning is further highlighted because it’s impossible for anyone to drink a case of alcohol and still be standing.

Flip Method #4: Inverting

Inverting clichés means turning negatives into positives or vice versa. You could also simply find the opposite of a clichéd expression. This method relies on finding an appropriate cliché to use it with, as it can’t be used on every cliché.

For instance, instead of “The grass is always greener on the other side,” you could write, “The grass is never greener on the other side.”  You could also use a more subtle way of doing this by playing with the language of the cliché. As an example, you could rewrite “Actions speak louder than words” as “Actions cower in the shadow of words”. Both still have the same meaning but one twists it in an unexpected way.

Flip Method #5: Swapping

This flip relies on identifying clichés that consist of two words or images that can be swapped while still making sense. For example, take the phrase “storming a teacup” and flip it to “teacup in a storm.” This creates a new and intriguing meaning, giving your lyrics a unique twist, while still maintaining a sense of familiarity.

Flip Method #6: Pairing

For this flip method, instead of looking at clichés as just famous phrases that we all know, we’re going to look at them as predictable word pairings we all know. Examples of this are “Hot and cold”, as well as “Soft and hard”. Predictable pairings are not just about the words themselves or the images that the words paint. They are also about predictable rhymes such as “Rain and pain”, “Fire and desire”, and “Love and above”.

To create new and exciting pairings, you could practice replacing a word in a predictable phrase or pairing, with different kinds of words. For example, if you are given the phrase “If you are a bird, then I am the ___”, you could fill in the blank in multiple ways. A good example of this is a song called “The Bird and The Rifle” by Lori McKenna, where she has the line “If you are a bird, then I am the rifle”.

Conclusion: Explaining the Flip Method

Clichés are unavoidable, but they can be valuable tools if we know how to wield them effectively. By using the Flip Method and experimenting with these six strategies, you can transform clichés into powerful and memorable lyrics.

If you would like more details, explanations and examples, then be sure to check out the video now.

And if you’re interested in more ideas, tools, techniques, and inspiration for your lyric writing make sure to check out this playlist that we have made just for you.

Level up your songwriting with five radically practical exercises used by professional songwriters around the world

by Veronica Tan

A Songwriter’s Enemy – Mistaking Universal Ideas for Generic

A Songwriter’s Enemy – Mistaking Universal Ideas for Generic

There’s a surprising enemy that lurks in the good intentions of songwriters chasing the ‘universal’ song lyric. In this blog post, we’ll explain what that enemy is.

This blog post aims to summarise our video ‘The Surprising Enemy of Good Songwriting’. Click here to watch the video for more details, explanations and examples.

Mistaking Universal Ideas for Generic

“I’m lost without you…”

“You’re my everything…”

The lines above are examples of lyrics that feel generic, and cringy. These generic lyrics seem to pop up everywhere, even in the work of songwriters who consciously strive to avoid them. 

The enemy we face in songwriting is mistaking universal ideas for generic ones. While universal ideas encompass experiences and emotions shared by many, generic lyrics fail to capture the specific details and nuances that make them relatable and authentic.

In the attempt to make something more relatable to a larger audience, you end up stripping them of anything that actually makes them personal and therefore, more relatable.

The Paradox of Great Songwriting

To forge a deep connection with our listeners, we must strike a delicate balance. 

On one hand, we aim for universality, crafting lyrics that resonate with a wide audience. On the other hand, we must retain the idiosyncrasies, specifics, and personal touches that breathe life into our words. 

It is the presence of these details that evokes familiarity and compels others to exclaim, “Me too!”

An Example of Relatable Lyrics

To show the importance of including specific details in songwriting, let’s examine Bruno Major’s song “Nothing.” The song’s first verse serves as a prime example of how specific imagery creates relatability and universality:

“Tracksuits, movies for two

We’ll take off iPhones and turn off our shoes

We’ll play Nintendo, though I always lose

‘Cause you watch the TV while I’m watching you”

Now, let’s imagine an alternate version where the relatable specifics are stripped away:

“We sit on the couch, just you and me
We love to hang out, nowhere I’d rather be”

Can you feel the difference? The generic version lacks the vividness and relatability of the original lyrics. By removing specific details, we inadvertently remove the elements that resonate with listeners on a personal level.

Exercises to Enhance Your Ability to Write Details

Sense writing is a great way to enhance your ability to transform generic ideas into specific details. You can find out more about that by downloading the free PDF eBook in which sense writing is the first exercise there.

Click here to download the free PDF eBook ‘The 5 Best Songwriting Exercises for Writing Great Lyrics’

Instead of going into detail regarding sense writing, here’s a sort of abridged version which will help you practice turning something generic into something specific. I call it, “Turning the Dial”.

  1. Pick a random generic line. For example, “It was a normal, lovely Saturday afternoon.” 
  2. Set a timer for six minutes. 
  3. Write as many lines as you can in those six minutes that turn that generic line into a specific one. For example, “Square of afternoon light inching along the floor”.

Choose Your Words Carefully

It’s important to note that incorporating details into your lyrics does not mean embellishing them with excessive amounts of adjectives and adverbs. Instead, prioritize the importance of nouns and verbs. 

You need to strike a careful balance between ensuring that you don’t rely on adjectives and adverbs for detail, but also remembering that every line doesn’t need to be dripping with detail either.

This can be done by trying to include one or two lines per verse that employ carefully chosen, specific images. Through this, you’ll enable listeners to enter your song’s world and forge a profound connection with your experiences.

Conclusion: A Songwriter’s Enemy – Mistaking Universal Ideas for Generic

Hopefully, this blog post helped give you a better understanding on how to ensure that your lyrics are more specific, as well as some ways you can avoid being too universal.

If you would like more details, explanations and examples, then be sure to check out the video now.

Level up your songwriting with five radically practical exercises used by professional songwriters around the world.