Announcing: The Art of Daily Practice online course, with new revisions and updates.

Yes, I talked to legendary songstress Diane Warren last night. That’s Diane to the right, me in the upper left.

Even if you think you’re unfamiliar with Diane, you’ve heard at least one of her songs. Possibly dozens of them. She’s written for Eric Clapton, Roy Orbison, Lionel Richie, Celine Dion, Tom Jones, Olivia Newton-John, Aerosmith, Wyclef Jean, The Commodores, Diana Ross, Christina Aguilera, Michael McDonald, Whitney Houston, and Al Green… To name a few. She is a monstrously successful songwriter.

The thing I admire most about Diana is her work ethic. On average, she works maybe ten hours a day for a full seven days on each song. As she says in the interview, she’ll spend an entire day of work on just one or two lines. And she focuses on just one song for the entire week, or until it’s done.

Sorry I wasn’t able to let you know about the show beforehand, but the invitation was literally last-minute. HuffPost Live contacted me shortly before the segment aired and it was a mad scramble to get myself there.

Please note that the video clip below is NSFW. That is, it’s NOT safe for work. Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll are all here in force. I appear near the end of the segment to ask Diane a few questions.

Be aware too that this interview is maybe 5% songwriting, 95% celebrity gossip. Sorry. I did what I could.

That doesn’t mean these subjects are sucked dry, though. There’s a simple way to approach a well-worn topic from a new angle:

Approach it with an unusual tone.

Note that the topic of a song is the situation or the subject it talks about. Tone is the attitude the lyric takes toward that topic.

Does the person speaking through the lyric seem to be angry? Excited? Tired? Grateful? Sarcastic? Carefree?

Certain tones are even baked into entire genres of music: dirges grieve; punk sneers; love ballads gush.

A Color Wheel for Lyricists

This starfish-looking thing is a Plutchik wheel–it works just like the color wheel that artists use, except instead of colors, this wheel maps moods.

You can use the Plutchik wheel to quickly brainstorm variations on tone.

Let’s take a common topic like “breaking up” and try out a few of the spokes.

Serenity: could be a messy love affair remembered years later, when one or both people have cooled off and can see the situation more calmly than they did at the time. Maybe there’s the beginning of understanding between them, too—or insight into how they went wrong.

Admiration: a breakup where the song’s narrator is admiring his new ex? Hmm, that’s intriguing. Why would there be admiration? Could it be because the narrator knows he screwed up, so he respects his partner for leaving? Or could it be that he still can’t help but love her even as he leaves her?

Amazement: this could be dramatic—what if the song’s narrator really, really didn’t see the breakup coming? What if the song captures that moment when the narrator’s still stunned and still processing what’s happening?

The world is drowning in breakup songs, but just by taking a glance at the Plutchik wheel you can find an angle that makes the topic seem fresh again. And of course you can do this with any song topic to find ideas.

Try This

• Use the Plutchik wheel to find an unusual tone for the next lyric you write. It doesn’t mean you have to use that unusual tone, but at least be aware of your creative options.
• I’ve only just scratched the surface of the number of possible tones. I’ll be putting together a long long list of them, so if you’d like to contribute any ideas, please post them in the comments section here!

When writing lyrics, you want your listener to feel something. But unfortunately for us, a lyric as simple as “I'm disappointed and sad, you guys” won't move an audience.

Too bad—that'd make our jobs much easier, eh?

I'm sure a master melody writer could make “I'm sad” sound alright… but as a lyricist, I don't like to depend on melody to carry a mediocre line. I'd rather write the kinds of lines that embed in listeners' hearts and minds, the kinds of lines that practically beg to be sung even before they're set to melody.

Show and Tell

Instead of telling the audience how the song's narrator feels, it's often better to look for a way to make the audience feel it themselves. Blandly stating an emotion isn't enough to make an audience feel that emotion. So writers use sensory description to draw the audience into the experience.

Writers of all kinds have been saying for a long time: “Show, don't tell.” Description is key. Try to illustrate moods.

Disappointment and unfulfilled desire appear often in song lyrics. When writing about disappointment, there's one trick of description that you can use to let your listeners experience exactly what your song's narrator is going through.

The trick is called anesis.

How to Use Anesis

To use anesis in a lyric, simply defuse and deflate a train of thought with the final line of a section.

Here's a quick example:

She stepped into her stockings
And combed out her hair
Rimmed her lips red
and pulled on her best dress
Fussed with the straps,
Slipped into her bracelet
Practiced her smile,
Stepped into her heels…
On her way in the taxi, he called her to say
“Something came up; I can't make it tonight.”

She feels let down, and so do we—because we came along for the ride. Seven lines of getting ready, and then he cancels? And he doesn't even give us a good reason?

We shaved our legs for this?!

We've All Felt Let Down Before

We've all gotten excited about things that later fizzled out. Life is full of let-downs and neverminds: some of them small, others profound.

Maybe you get excited and buy a stack of books, then put them on the shelf and never pick them up again. Maybe you buy an expensive, beautiful notebook, and then find yourself terrified to write in it.

Batteries–it turns out–are not included. Fame isn't everything you thought it would be. Wanting the [insert object of desire here] was actually better than having it. Need I go on?

Anesis is a great way to express life's false starts in a way that the audience can emotionally relate to. We've all experienced the emotional bait-and-switch.

Here are a few other scenarios that are well-suited to anesis, just off the top of my head:

• Being stood up
• Bracing for a crisis that fizzles out (what a relief)
• Making a simple mistake that undoes all your elaborate plans

“Almost Lover” by Alison Sudol has a great example of anesis right built into the first verse. See if you can find it.

Try It

Surely you can remember something that's left you feeling disappointed or relieved at some point in your life. If nothing comes immediately to mind, make something up using the examples I gave above.

Then, using anesis, retrace that experience for us in a verse of lyric. Get our hopes up with two or more lines; get us nodding along, and then–in the final line–let us down. Let us feel the disappointment (or the relief) for ourselves.

Feel free to share what you write with the rest of us in the comments section, if you like.

Thanks for reading.

fun denied by the photo stylings of Sister72

“How, as a human being, does one face infinity? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums, through encyclopedias and dictionaries…” –Umberto Eco

The fastest and easiest way to write a new song lyric is to begin making a list.

You're no stranger to list-making. Lists help you remember what to buy at the grocery store. They track things you need to do today. Bucket lists store famous places you want to see, people you want to meet, life experiences you want to have before you die.

In short: lists help us make sense of a chaotic world. They help us plan, prepare, and organize our lives. But even aside from all their practical uses, lists can also be entertaining and beautiful in their own right.

“Apples and quinces,

Lemons and oranges,

Plump unpeck'd cherries,

Melons and raspberries,

Bloom-down-cheek'd peaches,

Swart-headed mulberries,

Wild free-born cranberries,

Crab-apples, dewberries,

Pine-apples, blackberries,

Apricots, strawberries;

All ripe together

In summer weather…”

–”Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti

Lists Can Be Emotional

An old friend of mine likes to sit and list out things that make her happy and things that she's grateful for. She says making these lists lifts her mood and focuses her attention on positive things.

Every time she does that, whether she realizes it or not, she's writing her own personal version of “My Favorite Things“. The lyric of that Rodgers & Hammerstein classic is really just a long list of pleasing images, helped along by some delicious-sounding rhymes.

And the structure couldn't be any simpler: it's a list song! Just a list, plus a few lines of commentary toward the end. In modern terms, that lyric could be somebody's Pinterest board set to music.

Five Famous List Songs

In case you need more inspiration…

“Reasons to Quit“–by Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson. In the verses of this lyric, the singer lists out reasons why he should stop smoking and drinking, struggling to convince himself to kick the habit.

“50 Ways to Leave Your Lover“–by Paul Simon. A bit of false advertising here: the chorus lyric lists ways to leave your lover–but only five. Where are the lost forty-five ways, Paul? Oh well, we get the idea.

“I've Been Everywhere“–by Geoff Mack. This song packs 91 towns into two minutes and 45 seconds. The song's four verses are just tongue-twisting lists of cities for the singer to test her memory (and lung capacity) against. I've been performing this one for years, and this song sends a thrill through the audience every time. Probably because the audience is placing bets on whether you'll turn blue and pass out at the end of a verse…

“Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)“–Cole Porter wrote many list songs in his day that have since gone on to become classics, but “Let's Do It” was his first. Each verse is a list of people, animals, and even objects that “Do It”: one verse lists birds; another lists sea creatures; another lists insects. So really each verse is a sub-list.

“Hate it Here“–by Jeff Tweedy and Wilco. The singer lists out ways he's been keeping himself busy ever since his love left. Little chores, little things to stay busy–mowing, sweeping, laundry, checking the phone and the mail over and over again… this song's a great example of how a simple list can tell a story.

More List Songs

• “21 Things I Want in a Lover” by Alanis Morrissette
• “These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)” by Eric Maschwitz and Jack Strachey
• “What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor?”, a sea chantey

And this is just a tiny fraction of the list songs you can find out there in the musical wild.

Keep your eyes and ears sharp for lists–they turn up often in articles, novels, poems, lyrics, and in your own life. Any given list could be a song. Even something as seemingly mundane as a grocery list reveals something about the person making it.

Let's Do It (Let's Write a List Song)

Maybe one of the topics above got your gears turning–here they are recapped, plus a few extras:

• Things you love (a kind of Pinterest board set to music)
• Reasons to [do something you're reluctant to do]
• Things you admire in a lover
• Things you do to keep busy while avoiding [something unpleasant]
• Things that remind you of [a person or place that's important to you]

You can write from your own perspective or you could write as a character. Any one of these list song ideas could easily sprout hundreds and hundreds of variations. If you write a “My Favorite Things”-style list song from the perspective of Gengis Khan, by the way, please let me know.

Pick one of the above and start making a list. Go for it!

fetching to-do list photo by koalazymonkey

1. Disconnect. Power down your computer–or if you absolutely need the thing for some reason related to your practice and studies, sever it from the internet by disabling wireless.

2. Banish Television. According to Nielsen, the average American watches thirty-four hours of television per week (figures in your country are likely similar). Thirty-four hours of television! You know how much time top-shelf violinists spend practicing each week? About twenty-seven hours.

3. Timer. Every day, set a timer for 5-10 minutes. Within that time, work on a particularly mundane task related to your instrument or music theory. This is perfect for memorizing dry material inside and out over a long period of time, in small daily installments.

4. Noodle Control. This one’s for guitarists: lay the guitar down on your lap to avoid the temptation to noodle while you’re supposed to be learning chord forms, scale fingerings, or the note names on the fretboard. Thanks, Ted Greene. Again, just a few minutes of this every day will advance you.

5. Shut off your cell phone. Practicing music and writing songs is difficult enough; you don’t need the added distraction of incoming texts from National Geographic’s Twitter account. Unless you’re writing about giraffes or the indigenous peoples of New Guinea, but otherwise, your practice time is sacred. Kill your phone.

6. Take Your Song to Lunch. Seal off your office during your break or during lunch so that you can work on some music. If you work a conservative day job, just imagine how cool this’ll make you look around the office: guitar on one knee, tie roguishly thrown over one shoulder. Or searching in your purse for a guitar pick. Or playing the GarageBand piano wearing headphones in the break room…

7. Refuse Dead-End Gigs and Mind the Big Picture. If you’re out there churning out cover songs, you’re not working on the original material that has the potential to actually form your legacy. Seek a balance between paid work and time spent advancing along the path of what you really want to do. Stay true to your talent.

8. Set a Clear Purpose. Before you pick up your instrument, take a moment to decide what you’ll be practicing. Fix it clearly and firmly in your mind–an easy way to do this is to write down what you’re about to do. Then get to it! Stick to your plan and don’t allow yourself to wander.

9. Take Breaks. Each of us has a limited attention span that can be lengthened over time–but meanwhile, when you start to feel fidgety, restless, and distracted, take a ten-minute break and then come back to the task refreshed.

10. Set a timer for 15, 30, 60, or 90 minutes… however much you can stand. During that time, chip away at the tiny corners of a big, intimidating project. Don’t think about how much or how little progress you make. The goal is not to finish anything in that block of time, or to achieve perfect results—just spend the time focusing on it.

11. Want the Worm? Try waking up just ten minutes earlier to warm-up or practice before breakfast. Even ten minutes is enough to awaken your lyric writing, music composing, or performing instincts. You’d be surprised how even a brief warm-up in the morning can leave you thinking about art all day long. Pat Pattison, Berklee professor (and Gillian Welch’s lyric writing teacher) recommends writing first thing every morning in his excellent book, Writing Better Lyrics. I agree.

12. Redecoration. Try making musical instruments, music books, and recordings focal in your home. This is sometimes a process of cleaning up all the other clutter and sometimes a process of putting your instruments, books, or notebooks where they’re easiest to grab and easiest to use. If you’re trying to kick a television habit, might I suggest putting your remotes in inconvenient places? Make your instrument easier to access than the tempting distractions.

13. Reclaim Your Loose Change. Our lives are pecked away one dime at a time: long checkout lines, waiting rooms, commercial breaks, rambling and unclear public speakers. To counter this, carry a tiny notebook full of little factoids, scales, chords, etc. that you need to memorize. Whenever you’ve got a spare moment—in line at the store, etc.–pull out the notebook. Memorize concepts. Visualize certain scales and chords as though you had your instrument under your fingers.

14. Pavlov’s Dogs. Give yourself a treat every time you complete a task or goal. The road to advanced jazz harmony is paved with honey-roasted peanuts.

15. To be Continued. Don’t stand up from any practice session until you’ve jotted down some notes on what you’d like to do and learn next, what you need to work on, any questions you’d like to investigate, etc. Take a moment to reflect, review, and apply what you’d learned. Give yourself a clear place to  begin during your next session.

16. Make Yourself Want it. Write inspiring quotes from musicians you admire on your walls. Post them above the shower. Listen to favorite recordings and see yourself on stage performing them in front of lovestruck groupies. Play air guitar (even if you play real guitar). Imagine how amazing it will feel to be able to fluidly and easily execute the level of technique and artistry that you desire. Make yourself want it.

17. Consolidate and Review. Put everything you need for practice and creative work together in one place. Songwriters: pick up every scribbled idea and loose line, gather them all together in one box, and glue or copy them into a specific notebook or computer file. You can’t build on an idea if you’ve forgotten it exists, and if you suddenly get an idea for developing one of those little seedlings, you’ll want to be able to find the original before the spark burns out. I also did something similar with my recording setup: gathering all the cables and equipment together on one table significantly boosted my recording time. Make it as easy as possible to make music.

18. Earbuds. Fill up your iPod or similar device with inspiring music, interviews of musicians, and music podcasts to listen to while you shop, mow the lawn, shower… etc. I’ve done some of my best listening while raking leaves up here in Maine.

19. Ditch Eeyore. Hang out with other creative types and positive people.

20. Groupies. I hope you don’t think I’m rude for bringing this up twice, but I’ve seen it inspire lots of my youngest guitar students. Imagine how cool you’ll look rocking out in front of all those cute boys or girls. If you’re a more subtle, sensitive performer, imagine the starry-eyed admirers who’ll hear your songs and think you’re a true poet and ask you to sign their copy of Anne Sexton’s complete works (that’s never happened to me either, but hey, we can dream).

21. Geek Out with New Tools and Toys. Buy a new piece of gear or a book about your chosen craft. Even just tuning up the piano or slapping a new set of strings on the ol’ guitar can be enough to pick you up.

22. Slow Down. It’s ultimately faster to slow down and develop accuracy and knowledge before speed. There’s always the temptation to hurry on to advanced things, but don’t rush–make sure you understand each new concept or can play each new musical phrase cleanly and in tempo before moving on. In the long run, this streamlines your entire course of study.

23. Don’t Hide Behind Your Day Job. Yes, work’s tough. But it’s even tougher when you don’t look out for yourself. Practice whether you’re tired or not. Write lyrics whether you want to or not. Think long-term.

24. Use Ben Franklin’s method for tracking adherence to desired habits.

25. Find a practice buddy. Hang out frequently with musicians and other creative types—we tend to absorb the traits of the people we spend time around. Share what you learn with one another, offer each other critiques, and the whole group will be better for it.

26. Create a Points System. 5 points for a new chord form! 10 points for a new scale! 5 points for an idea for a song title! 10 points for a verse written! Set yourself a particular number of points that you must fulfill every day. Having a menu of choices will help you sustain some momentum while giving you freedom to pick and choose what you feel like doing on any given day. This is great for inspiring healthy competition against your own high scores.

27. Reverse Psychology. Set a strict time limit on practicing (see #26, immediately above). You are not allowed to rack up any more any more than 30 points’ worth of music every day. Nope, not even 31. No more than 30 allowed. If you’re weird and contrary like me, you’ll soon start bargaining with yourself: “Well, that song idea isn’t that great. Really it was just worth 3 points, not 5…humph.” Or you could take suggestion #3—setting a timer—and tell yourself that you have only that much time to spend on music today, not a second more.

28. Quit Hitting Yourself. Fellow music teachers have given me funny looks for this one, but I stand by it: do not guilt yourself if you skip a session, and do not make yourself do double duty next time—instead, just consciously choose not to practice today. Look your piano right in the… keys (or look your guitar right in the soundhole) and choose to do something else instead. And if you do have to fulfill obligations or do something fun instead, feel good about it. If you torture yourself about lack of self-discipline, you’ll come to associate music-making with guilt and feelings of inadequacy. What good will that do? This goes for my students as well: when you don’t practice between lessons, I’ll always be able to teach you something cool or interesting regardless. Guilt will do you no good–just troubleshoot instead and plan ways to “trick” yourself into practicing (there are a good number of suggestions for doing that in this post.)

29. Integrate Tiny Practice Windows Into Your Existing Schedule. Chip away at a few things while dinner’s cooking every night. Leave time for songwriting right after every workout. Sit down in your pajamas with your instrument every night right before bed. If you embed a practice habit into an existing habit, you may find that practice is easier to maintain.

30. Keep Out. Post a skull and crossbones symbol on the door to a quiet room, lock the door, and make sure everybody else who lives in your home understands exactly what you mean when you hang that sign. Warning: Cranky Musician Inside.

31. Books, Videos, Lectures, and CDs. Fill up your shelves with media related to your art. Bookmark or subscribe to helpful websites (cough cough).

32. Rig the Game. Here’s a particularly evil, self-flagellating, and ridiculously elaborate tip: to enhance your points system (see #26 above), give your favorite tasks odd numbers of points that won’t quite add up neatly in the daily sum. When you’ve set yourself a goal of fifty points per day, and on Wednesday night you end up with 47, the desire for a nice even  number might compel you to do something extra that puts you well over your daily benchmark. Yeah, ok, I’m reaching here, aren’t I?

33. Set Shorter-Term Goals and Deadlines. Brainstorm ten song ideas, write the full first draft of a song, and so on. Short, medium, or long-term goals are all fine—but choose only one, make it manageable, and do whatever it takes to get that goal completed. Write reminders on your calendar. Program them into your cell phone, complete with irritating alarm tone.

One Last Point

One more tip: music is a long-term game, so be kind to yourself. It’s tempting to run intense marathon practice sessions, but this is an endurance race, not a sprint. Start with manageable amounts of practice every day and work your way up slowly as your attention span lengthens.

Think tortoise, not hare.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this article, will you sign up to receive email updates via the sign-up box below? Because I’ve got lots more to say about songwriting, and I’d love to have you as a reader.

Becoming a master lyricist takes years, even decades of study and practice. But the good news is: you can get a meaningful start today. If you've got a little free time, you can start now.

Two Buckets: Style and Content

To begin, you need two separate places to write stuff down. Divide a notebook into two sections, or grab two manila folders. Creating two text files will work too.

Whatever medium you choose, the important thing is that you label one of these sections “STYLE” and the other “CONTENT.” Together, these two sections form what we'll call your “Copybook”.

From now on, while listening to music, keep an ear out for phrases of lyric that speak to you. Any clever turn of phrase, arresting image, insightful line, anything at all that grabs your interest and makes you feel something.

Then, when you hear a line of lyric that you love, make a note about it any way you can. Write yourself a post-it, step out of the shower to jot it in a notebook, or pull over safely to the shoulder of the road. Write down the title of the song as a reminder to return to it later.

There are two general reasons a given lyric might grab your attention.

1. It might be because of great content–maybe the ideas expressed in the song resonate with you.

2. The lyric might grab you because of great style–maybe there's a cool turn of phrase, an intoxicating cluster of rhymes, a striking metaphor… basically whenever any cool writing skill gets flexed, that's style.

One way to think of it is: content involves what the songster says, and style is how she says it.

Normally these two elements of a song are fused inseparably together. What we're going to do is slice the song in half like a grapefruit to reveal the delicious structure and the juicy essence of the song: in one section of your copybook, the song's content; in the other section, the song's style.

Analyzing a Song For Style

So let's say on your way to work you hear a line of lyric that hits you like a sucker punch, dead center in the heart.

As soon as you can, write or print out an accurate lyric sheet for that song. Grab a cup of coffee and a blue pen and start marking that lyric up. I suggest setting aside at least 20 minutes to really focus and settle into the world of the song.

You might want to mark any or all of the following:

Rhyme and other language sounds: rhyming techniques, rhyme schemes, alliteration, etc.

Imagery and figurative language: lyric imagery, descriptions, similes, metaphors

Lyric structure: arrangement of song sections, number of lines per song section, length of lines, structure of the most striking lines

While marking up a lyric, keep an eye out for any specific strategies and techniques that you've learned about in your study of lyric writing. Mark and label these techniques wherever you find them.

The more you know about the craft of lyric writing, the more you'll get out of studying songs this way.

Analyzing a Song For Content

You can also study a lyric for its central ideas and themes.

Ideas for songs can't be copyrighted, and for any given idea there are thousands and thousands of different ways to develop that premise into a full lyric.

As an example: how many songs use the premise of “an empowered person singing about a breakup and moving on with their life?” Just off the top of my head:

• “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover” Paul Simon
• “I Will Survive” Gloria Gaynor
• “Forget You” Cee Lo Green

All three of these songs connect to the theme “Breaking up and moving on” from a different angle. And of course there are thousands of other lyrics that revolve around that core concept.

There are even whole genres and song forms that have loose premises built right into them. A few examples:

• Nocturnes create an atmosphere of nighttime.
• Ballads are story songs–often love stories set to music.
• Blues songs tend to be about personal hardships and struggle.

At the heart of every song is a condensed core idea that every word of the lyric revolves around. Any lyric's premise can be boiled down to just a few words of description.

As the drunken sailor knows all too well

Take a sea chantey for example: the first verse of “Drunken Sailor” lays out the whole concept of the song.

“What shall we do with a drunken sailor?”

The rest of the song is just a long, enthusiastic brainstorming session of ways that the ship's crew might mess with the unconscious and unfortunate sot:

Drop a lobster down his britches!

Put him in the crow's nest and watch him fall out!

Shave his [NSFW] with a rusty razor!

Given the number of times this song has been sung since the early 1800's in all of the world's oceans, it's believed that hundreds, even thousands of original verses have been invented for this tune–each verse being another creative, cruel, and hilarious prank on the haplessly drunken sailor.

I've invented a few verses myself. I especially like:

Draw [NSFW] on his face with a magic marker!

Here's the moral of “The Drunken Sailor”: one core premise can sprout boatloads of unique treatments from different writers. You can borrow ideas from existing songs and invent totally original new material based on that central premise.

Here's the second moral of “The Drunken Sailor”: don't pass out drunk on a boat.

Layers of Analysis

You'll love some song lyrics for their form and style.

You'll love other lyrics for their ideas, their messages, and their content.

Sometimes–oh, happy day–you'll love both.

Bear in mind too that you'll live and grow with certain songs as you learn more about the craft of lyric writing. Maybe early on the imagery in a song captures your imagination, so on your first pass, you marvel at the lyric's lavish descriptions. Months later, you listen to the same song again and maybe the rhyme scheme is the thing that most impresses you now–a surprising and unusual pattern.

The more you learn about the craft of lyric writing, the more detailed your analyses will become, and the more you'll learn.

Writing things down and marking up lyrics is a way of really making techniques and ideas stick in your mind. It helps you connect the techniques you learn with lyrics you love. As you analyze any given lyric, try to really pinpoint exactly why and how that lyric appeals to you, both as a listener and a writer.

Some tunes you'll study just once and move on. But you'll find yourself returning to other lyrics again and again, continuing to learn from them for years to come.

Two ways to write an original song

At this point you may be wondering how exactly we bridge the gap from analyzing song lyrics to writing song lyrics of our own.

There are many ways to go about that–but here are two of the simplest and most powerful kickstarts to writing lyrics of your own.

1. Take any aspect(s) of style–rhyme schemes, turns of phrase, poetic techniques–and brainstorm new content to fill them with.
2. Take an existing premise (aka the song's content) and express it with your own unique blend of techniques and your own style.

Perils of imitation

Borrowing from other songwriters is a totally normal and ethical way of piecing together bold new lyrics of your own–but only if it's done thoughtfully. Here are a few pointers to help you avoid the most common pitfalls of imitation:

Find your own angle. Imitate intelligently, approaching ideas from your own stylistic preferences and your own unique life experience.

Draw from many different sources to avoid sounding like a clone of any one artist or any one song.

Be critical. Appreciate well-crafted work, but acknowledge weaknesses you find as well. Even the best songwriters write a mediocre line now and then. Learn from everyone's best methods, but try also to avoid their weaknesses.

Study the craft of lyric writing as often as you can. This will bring a constant fresh stream of new techniques to your attention. The more techniques you absorb, the better-stocked your toolbox will be.

Lyrics worth analyzing

Of course, you do need to pick good examples for all this to work. Here's an incomplete list of lyrics I've found instructive and inspiring, either because of content, style, or both.

• “Alice” by Tom Waits
• “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell
• “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman
• “The Fabulous Ones” by Blackalicious
• “Mojo Pin” by Jeff Buckley
• “Four Women” by Nina Simone
• “Elephant Talk” by King Crimson
• “Brother” by Murder by Death
• “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” by Paul Simon
• “Why?” by Andrew Bird
• “Misery is the River of the World” by Tom Waits
• “The Late Greats” by Wilco
• “Heavy Metal Drummer” by Wilco
• “Strawberry Wine” by Matraca Berg and Gary Harrison
• “Killing Me Softly With His Song” by Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel
• “Slow Like Honey” by Fiona Apple
• “Fast As You Can”, also by Fiona Apple

Conclusion

Creative, original work often begins as a reaction to the work of others. If you resolve to spend even 20 minutes a day analyzing great lyrics, you're going to accumulate a lot of knowledge over the coming week, month, year, and beyond.

One slice at a time, you'll absorb the talents of master songwriters–until you can stand comfortably among them.

Maybe the songs you write are fantastic, but that’s still no guarantee that your music is something your immediate family and friends are able to appreciate. The reaction you get might range from polite applause to wrinkled foreheads.

If that’s your situation, try not to take it personally.There’s no magical way to appeal to everyone–instead of fretting over what  your pals or your kids or your boyfriend think, concern yourself with the people who already understand and enjoy your chosen styles of music. Plug into that community.

The world is a beautifully diverse place. We want the people in our lives to love what we love, of course we do. Especially early on, when songwriting’s still new, exciting, and scary.

It’s not always in the cards, though–and that’s okay. Sometimes the people in your personal life are simply not your audience. Smile, accept this as best as you can, and keep making the strange beautiful music you were born to make.

Do you want us to listen to your songs over and over?

Are you sure?

This bit of radio wisdom–that heavy rotation is better–is something we often take for granted. And of course it’s really taken for granted by the high-rolling music industry. “It’s gotta be catchy, it’s gotta have a memorable, addictive hook you want to hear again and again. The more requests the radio stations get, the better. The more YouTube plays it gets, the better. The more sales it makes, the better.”

That’s one perfectly valid way to think about your music. But it’s not the only way, and it’s not the only way to measure success.

Some of the most powerful listening experiences of my life are experiences I might never repeat in my entire lifetime–because they’re so intense and so difficult to digest. I can’t cope with the jaggedness of Cecil Taylor’s Silent Tongues every day. I can’t navigate the emotional storms of Patty Waters’s 14-minute rendition of “Black is the Color” every day (or even every decade). There are days when I haven’t got the mental energy and fortitude to handle Albert Ayler’s Spiritual Unity or Electric Masada’s At the Mountains of Madness.

Some of the music I’ve given just one or two rotations to has had the greatest impact on me as an artist and as a person. In some cases, I didn’t even enjoy the music on a sensory level. All of the artists above can be grating, dissonant, stormy, unpleasant. So why, you may ask, would I listen to something that I don’t like? Is that neurotic or what?

In the case of such far-out artists, the answer is that now and then I find myself in a mood where I’d rather listen to something intense and provocative than relax with something comfortable. Plus I’m a sucker for anything inventive, even if I don’t entirely “get it”. But here’s the main reason I collect musical oddities: listening to music so incredibly original gives me courage. All those artists I listed above are trailblazers who had the strength to create things that are boldly different, so different that they alienate many listeners.

Nonetheless those artists endured criticism and remained so fully committed to creating art their own way that their work really left a mark–an influence that ripples far past the usual shelf life for a pop hit.

There are some pieces of music you’ll listen to over and over until you’ve heard one delicious confection of a three-minute pop song over a hundred times. There are other pieces of music you might listen to just once–but it will shake you awake and remind you that there are some experiences in life that are so powerful and refreshingly bizarre that we only want to have them once. Maybe twice.

And at the core of all this, a lesson: that it’s okay–really, truly okay–to go your own way and work on something that isn’t even within a stone’s throw of the established norm. Every convention and tool that we take for granted today was, at some point, a wild experiment made by somebody out of curiosity.

Consider whether there’s a work in you that is refreshingly strange. Something new and exciting that a certain number of listeners are going to wrinkle their noses at. The kind of music where the payoff won’t be 1.3 million YouTube views, but instead a powerful experience for anyone who falls under the spell of this strange fascinating song you wrought. Maybe it’ll have a small audience, tiny even, but one that will really, truly hear you–and regard your work as something irreplaceable, with a niche in the musical wild that is truly all its own.

photo by andrecchin