Writing Song Lyrics – How Do You Find a Subject?

Finding a good, interesting, fun or distinctive subject for song lyrics always takes time and energy. Not only because the subject needs to be ‘describable’ and singable, but also because you’ll eventually need a complete set of lyrics on paper — not just a promising first line. Useful topics aren’t always easy to come by. That’s why guest blogger and songwriting teacher Lex Hakker offers a few tips.

Song lyrics or just “lyrics”?

Why ‘song lyrics writing’? In English, ‘lyrics’ can mean the words to any kind of song, but in practice most of us mean pop/rock songs. In this series, I’ll use ‘song lyrics’ and ‘lyrics’ interchangeably — whichever reads best.

Your own experience

Drawing on your own experience can be fascinating in many ways. When you explore what’s going on inside you, you can arrive at interesting — and surprising — images and emotions. Ultimately, the challenge is to ‘capture’ those images and emotions in language. That language doesn’t always have to be concrete. You can also look for less concrete, more vague descriptions. In pop music lyrics, you’ll find both approaches in abundance. ‘I’m lying alone with my head on the phone, thinking of you till it hurts’ (All Out of Love by Air Supply) is a wonderful example of a realistic image and intense feelings, beautifully captured in concrete words.

Examples with vaguer language include John Lennon’s I am the Walrus, A Salty Dog by Procol Harum and Pink’s What About Us?

Newspaper articles/films/books

The best-known example of a song based on a newspaper article is probably A Day in the Life by The Beatles. The intense story behind Jeremy by Pearl Jam also comes from a newspaper article. A Day in The Life uses more abstract language — you don’t immediately know what it’s about — but for Jeremy the writer used a very concrete, unmistakable narrative style. The boys from ABBA wrote King Kong Song after watching a film about King Kong, and Metallica wrote One, inspired by the film Johnny Got His Gun. Elton John had a big hit with Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. In the book (and later the film) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, the main character Dorothy first had to find this Road before she could go home again.

Stories, anecdotes and situations

Stories and anecdotes — and sometimes funny remarks — can be a source of inspiration. Listen in a pub, when you’re standing in a queue, or anywhere else, to the conversations around you and make mental (or other) notes of lines you think you might be able to use later. Writers also build up a huge archive of ideas, quotes and associations. The great title A Hard Day’s Night (The Beatles) was a spontaneous joke by Ringo Starr and was immediately noted down by Lennon and McCartney. And sometimes someone tells you a story — whether it happened to them or not — and you instantly think: ‘Blimey, that would be a great scene in a film or a book.’ Write it down straight away! In his book Lyrics, Paul McCartney says the song She Came In Through The Bathroom Window was written after a real-life incident. He came home and unexpectedly came face to face with a female fan who had broken into his house via the bathroom window.

Now: keep associating and develop the idea

Say you want to write something romantic, but not with everyday lyrics. You’ve just read a famous Shakespeare sonnet with the opening line ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’. That line could immediately trigger images and associations of warmth, languor, being in love, trust and depth. After thinking for a while, you find your first line:

You, my dearest, are my summer day…

Lovely! Remember it! Now, does the next line have to rhyme? No, definitely not! We’ll see about that later. You associate:

Your eyes warm me and your smile melts me

Odd wording, but striking — and not forbidden. It says exactly what you want to say. If you keep this up throughout the song, it becomes a stylistic ingredient. And then…

You, my dearest, tell me more and more Every time, you leave me speechless once again.*

In the same way, you associate and combine the Contrast (Bridge) and the Chorus into a whole. We’ll return to that in another article.

Develop an idea for a subject as fully as you can: associate and combine to your heart’s content. Make notes, add references, and don’t put the brakes on your thoughts. You won’t use everything later on, but it’s better to have too many notes than too few.

Inspiration

To ‘translate’ beautiful images, for the English language you could do some fieldwork by occasionally leafing through The Complete Cole Porter, The Complete Bob Dylan, the work of Paul Simon, or Shakespeare’s sonnets. The more modern output of Taylor Swift, Passenger, Alanis Morissette, Eminem and Lewis Capaldi also shows brilliantly how strong language can help you write a compelling story. For writing in your own voice and style, you might listen to lyricists such as Noel Coward, Tim Rice, Elvis Costello, Jarvis Cocker, Morrissey, Kate Bush, Alex Turner and Mike Skinner (The Streets). Also try reading a poetry collection — for example, by Carol Ann Duffy.