I recently received an email from a fellow songwriter that raises some excellent questions about the relevance of what we write as artists to the commercial industry of songwriting, and I thought I’d share my response in a blog. The writer had read my book, Popular Lyric Writing: 10 Steps to Effective Storytelling, among other songwriting books, and arrived at an insightful observation regarding the craft and business:

I read your book on songwriting 10 steps to great story writing. I thought it was excellent. I think you were able to illustrate the “soul” of lyrics in a practical way, making it less of a mystery but more concrete.

One of my favorite writers is Bruce Springsteen who of course, is a great story teller.

One dilemma I have is I don’t see a lot of these techniques in hit songs. I mean all the books tell you to “show don’t tell” but in pop songs there isn’t a lot of room for vivid details. I wish I had a dollar for every “I’ll love you forever” song I hear. The lyrics seem to be non pictured but just verbal chit chat.

It’s true that many of the songs we hear on major radio waves are not driven by expert lyrics. That is to say, if the lyric were separated from the track, the melody, the groove, and the artist’s image and marketing campaign, it wouldn’t hit us as particularly memorable. Much of what we hear from well-known acts is primarily ‘telling’ language, thoughts and feelings that don’t mean much apart from the context of the music in which they sit.

Though lyrics are an integral part of songwriting, they certainly don’t always take center stage. The melody is a huge driving factor in popular music, and we can observe how much so by simply looking at the fan base of some of the biggest entertainers of today. As a song is promoted and played over and over again, their simplicity lends to even the most tone-deaf listeners.

But we might ask the question, what if popular songs offered more substance in the lyric – would that weaken their popularity? I think the answer is no, it wouldn’t. Artists like John Mayer still uphold a high level of lyric writing while appealing to the masses. It can be done, and is being done, but by a select few.

Because we don’t see the kind of lyric writing in most popular mainstream music that the songwriting books harp about, I don’t think that points to the conclusion that popular mainstream music wouldn’t benefit from higher craft. What it does point to, is that writing great lyrics to great melodies is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. Many of us write decent songs each day, songs that capture our listener’s attention and express purposeful messages. But when we really get honest with ourselves, can we say with confidence that we write hit songs every day? Do we write the kind of melodies and lyrics and grooves that make fans want to lose themselves in our world for hours at a time, buy our clothing line, wear our perfume? And in that light, do we have the marketing campaigns behind us that will propel our music to hundreds of thousands of people? Lastly, I think it’s also important to point out that many songs sung by our well-known entertainers are actually written by songwriters who are deeply immersed in the business. They are brought into a project for their ability to work with the artist and turn out songs that will appeal to the fan base the artist is already entertaining. This is not to say that those working on these mainstream projects are robots, but that they too are compelled to work within the confines of the industry machine to a certain extent.

As independent artists of today, we are writing with a distinct difference. Our goal is not to appeal to the industry gatekeepers, but to appeal to our fans. I believe that fans want good music, and want purposeful songs about real moments in life – more than ‘we’ll always be together, always and forever’. Though most of the popular music industry is not giving their audiences more, I don’t believe that it is because the audiences couldn’t handle it. And regardless of what I believe, I have only to look at the songs I’ve written that win over my listeners. Are they generalized lyrics with really catchy melodies appealing to folks who just want to party and have fun, or are they lyrically driven verse/refrain songs that appeal to a more thoughtful, insightful crowd? What is it that draws listeners to our own personal music? When we can pinpoint that, we can understand who our fans are, and therefore understand the need that we innately fill with our voice. Those are the questions that lead to greater expression through better songs, and greater connection with a broader audience. Regardless of what is driving the major music industry, our future depends on our ability to create an experience for our fans.

I love the part of your book where you said the greater the detail, the less time has passed. I think we live moment to moment, so it makes sense songs should too.
But one thing that came to mind is, once you have zeroed in on a particular moment with detail, where do you go from there? Do you string together different moments with each verse, or do you keep defining the same detailed moment throughout?

This is a great question pertaining to the craft of writing with external or ‘showing’ language. When we draw a listener into a specific experience, we’re drawing a picture in which we can evoke certain emotions. Those emotions draw their importance from the scene we’ve set, and so the question is how to craft the song around that scene to make our main message truly believable and powerful. I’d like to show you how to use a few techniques from my book and Commercial Songwriting Techniques, the online www.berkleemusic.com course, to apply this kind of imagery-writing to your own songs. But, that’s another topic – so please allow me to do so in another blog on tools for the craft of songwriting, which I’ll post soon. Thank you for your great questions, and please feel free to comment in response to my thoughts here.

Happy writing,
Andrea