PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Songwriting Writing lyrics

Songs come to me in many ways. In older songs I've written, normally songs that were inspired from music are in the keys of E, D or a minor key, Am Em or Dm. Songs that began lyrically are almost always in A. But it's my belief and I've learned that songs are deftly hidden like puzzles all around me in plain site. Church signs, billboards, Tv guides and commercials, bulletins, brochures, flyers, book titles and lists all have provided songwriters inspiration for song ideas or lyrics. John Lennon wrote songs from circus posters and newspaper articles. The Bee Gees in a documentary stated they normally wrote a song as if it were meant to be recorded by a specific famous artist.

I wrote a song from a list of song titles on a Forum members web page. I wrote a song from a girl telling me her close friends said she had "sweet eyes" and she wanted me to write a song verse on the spot based on sweet eyes, which I was able to come up with a verse and chorus in that moment. I've written songs as if a specific celebrity artist were intending to record it.

The most successful song of my songwriting career was the incentive of another of my most successful originals. I had just written "I saw her cry", a sad ballad, and was auditioning it to a few friends. One, girl, Linda, who had recently broken up with her boyfriend, commented this new song and the others I had played that day were good songs but they were all sad, heartbroken songs. She asked "Why don't you write a happy song for me?" "Linda" was the result and lyrically, the first verse began with "I tried to write a happy song for you Linda... and the verse ended with " But you spoiled it all, with your broken heart"...

Because of the way our brains uses association to create mental images, pairing three random nouns will always create a vivid mental image that were one to write down that mental image on paper, they can easily write 3/4 or more of a page and also quickly develop a song storyline. It's easily demonstrated - picture in your mind- tree, river, girl -or- book, tree, dress -- somewhat similar but also quite different images appear in your mind. Write a song about the story behind that image in your mind.