I have ever read an article named “How to write song lyrics?”. The author claimed that the melody weighs too much than the lyrics. The listeners don’t care what you are singing only if your melody is catchy enough. However, it sometimes works but not always. Lyrics do matter because they are the most important media to covey the song theme to the listeners visually.
Sharing the tips on “How to get inspiration in songwriting” with you is our special menu today.
Get Inspiration
The inspiration for writing lyrics can come from a wide variety of different places such as your personal experiences or the experiences of friends and family.
A person’s experiences are in his stories and were expressed by song lyrics.
New songwriters coincidentally take digging their deep memories as the first step in the process of writing lyrics. Recall the experiences that are delighted, sad or angry and go through them to find one that strikes the hearts. The stories behind these experiences may be your inspiration for writing lyrics, and the emotion felt could help find a theme for your song.
What Are Words is Chris Medina made for his fiancee after she was crushed by a car causing half paralyzed. He wrote his promise into lyrics that he loves her and will look after her to death.
“What are words
If you really don’t mean them
When you say them
What are words
If they’re only for good times
Then they done
…”
“What Are Words” comes from Chris Medina’s personal experiences. So we can see that writing song lyrics with true background stories are extremely common in the music field.
Get Inspiration by Reading
Except for collect stories from people around, songwriters are often using three ways to get inspiration in writing song lyrics.
As it is known, music is one of the forms of art. The behind cultural background or story background makes music deep, meaningful and thought-provoking.
So songwriters often take stories as a base to do creation.
They usually collect stories by reading books, magazines, newspapers that any other kind of media. Then note those that impressed them as lyrics materials for future use.
When it comes to collecting stories from the media that one thing suddenly occurs to mind. And that is the creation background of Paul McCartney‘s “She’s Leaving Home.”
In his description of the writing process behind the song, he says,” John and I wrote She’s Leaving Home together. It was my inspiration when we saw a story in the newspaper about a young girl who had left home and had not been found. There were a lot of those at the time, and that was enough to give us the storyline. So I started to write the lyrics：she slips out and leaves a note and then the parents wake up …”
So She’s Leaving Home was published in 1967.
Stories saw on media can not only be used in your song lyrics writing process. It is also one of the methods to inspire you to recreate new ideas.
Get Inspiration by Talking
You’ll find them in the interactions you have with other people, in the movies you see, in the stories you read… there’s so much material out there for you.
And the other way to inspire songwriters is to communicate or to use any other kind of brainstorm.
Talk to someone about a topic, a phenomenon or something else that he is really interested in.
Compared to listening, a single-way information reception, a discussion is more target-oriented.
The topic or the thinking hid behind a phenomenon that you want to discuss is the theme you set for your song.
During a discussion, at least two people share abundant truths(stories) to support their opinions. And their ideas about that topic will spring up when thoughts are battling. Record the conversation and trim them into a logical text.
It seems more like writing something to tell truth, to wake people from chaos, anxiety, corruption… a negative state. That’s it.
Supposed that we want to write a song about “broke up”. Then, we discuss everything about it.
We extract stories that make people feel sad, regret, so on and so forth. What do you get from these stories? How to express the emotions you feel? And how to convey your understandings to your audience?
…
Thinking about these questions will help you shape your lyrics, but remember to use vague and common words.
“Beat It” is created by Michael Jackson.
When President Reagan was in office, he saw many children of a new generation were fighting, taking drugs, and so on. It almost became the Beat generation. The President thought it might be helpful if Jackson, who had an influence on young people in those days, wrote a song to tell teenagers what’s right to do. So Jackson wrote this song, and the lyrics of “Beat It” are about defeat and courage.
Get Inspiration by Imaging
Jackson reminded his childhood experiences, so he conveyed to the new generation that true brave people will use wisdom to solve problems peacefully not violence when they are in trouble.
This approach may require more imagination and creative accumulation than the first two. You need to recreate on the basis of a real story which is similar to an adaptation, and then composing lyrics based on the adapted story.
“Sailor” is an old classical Chinese song, composed and written by Zheng Zhihua in the bathtub. Zheng Zhihua had many fantasies when he was bathing. He described that he imagined that he was on a boat, drifting on a peaceful sea. There were a lot of sailors on this boat. When the towering waves suddenly hit the boat, the sailors fought with the sea bravely which touched Zheng Zhihua’s heart. So he connected the images in his mind with the stories he knew about sailors in reality.
So we can say Sailor is a recreation of imagination and reality.
The inspiration of “Someone Like You” by Adele comes from a broke relationship of her.
When she heard that her ex married, she wrote this song. When she creating “Someone Like You”, she imagined that she was 40 and want to meet her ex again. However, she found that he already had a pretty wife and a cute child but she was still alone.
Good song lyrics can bring you into the scenes that the lyrics described, and you may feel the strong emotions just like that is exactly what you experienced before.
That’s all for the first part of How To Write Song Lyrics. And later, we’ll share tips about how to find a theme for your song. If you find it interesting, welcome to share it with your friends who may need it.
