know where to start. Do we just dive right in with the verses? Do we try to craft our chorus first? Maybe coming up with the title is the way to go.
I’ve always found that before you put pen to paper, you should think about the big picture of your song. From there you can get more and more detailed. For example, you might first start by asking yourself “what’s the main idea for my entire song?” Then from there you can ask yourself what you want each section to do. In other words, figure out how each of your verses, your chorus and your bridge are going to move your story forward. If you figure out the big picture and then the main idea of each section, you’ll have a better road map for writing your song.
A while back, I took a workshop with Berklee lyric writing professor, Pat Pattison. He would have some of the students play their songs, and then he’d review their lyrics with them. A lot of times, when he felt the lyrics got confusing, he asked three rhetorical questions of the student’s work:
Who’s talking?
Who is he (or she) talking to?And
Why?
Ever since that workshop, I’ve asked myself these questions before any song I write. The reason being that these questions help you to think about the big picture of your song, in a similar way to what I talked about in the preceding paragraphs.
If you still don’t understand why asking yourself these three questions could make or break your lyrics, let’s look at a real world example, in the song (alternately known as) “Forget You” by Cee Lo Green. I’ll make the argument that of the three questions posed above, two of them are clearly defined throughout the song. They are:
Who’s talking? In this song, it’s a guy who lost his girl.
Why (is he talking to her)? He’s jealous, angry, and still wants her back.
When we go through all the lyrics, you’ll see that those two answers ring true consistently throughout the whole song. But the answer to the second question does not:
2. Who is he talking to?
The answer to this question varies through the lyric, and pulls us away from getting into the song as much as we could. You’ll notice that throughout most of the song, he’s talking to the girl.His ex. But there are two lines in the song that are addressed to the girl’s new guy, directly. It’s these two lines:
"I see you driving ’round town with the girl I love and I’m like,
Forget you
I guess the change in my pocket wasn’t enough I’m like,
Forget you and forget her too"
If you wanted to get super-technical, we could even argue that in the line “I guess the change in my pocket wasn’t enough,” he’s talking to himself, or the listener directly. But for lack of any further confusion, we’ll lump that line in with the stuff he’s saying to the boyfriend.
You might say “okay, well so what? It’s only two lines in the whole song. It’s hardly noticeable.” Well, the problem is these two lines happen in the chorus, so we consistently go BACK to them throughout the song. The perspective of who he’s talking to changes causing our minds to lose focus on what’s happening, and who he’s talking to. In addition to that, the song starts with these two lines, so we begin hearing the song with an expectation that he’s talking to the girl’s new guy. But then throughout most of the song, he’s not.
Let’s check it out.
Nice post