Songwriting News: How To Find The Lyric That Points The Way (2024)

Tonight in a songwriting workshop I was working with a writer and something came up that I’ve encountered in my own writing many times.

When I have a basic idea for a lyric, a starting point, I’m just scrambling around for ideas. I’m trying different approaches, putting down anything that comes to mind that might lead me somewhere interesting or simply be relevant (and sometimes not even that – things are loose at that point!).

Then – and this happens most frequently when I step away from the lyric for a day, a week, or more – I revisit what I’ve written and don’t find much… but there is a line or a couplet, and sometimes only a line or a couplet, where the lyric springs to life.

In that line or lines it feels like the personality of the singing narrator, or the song itself, has come to life for a moment. Or it feels like the song, which previously was just a receptacle for random flavorless ideas, now has an attitude – for just that moment.

That’s what I’m looking for. Something that feels like it belongs in this song and no other. That’s when I have a real starting point. That’s what I build around and flesh out.

I’m not talking about the Chorus or the Title. They are essential and sometimes the attitude, the character, the angle, to get to that Chorus is immediately apparent, inherent in the Title or Chorus. But sometimes, many times, it isn’t clear, and that approach (usually in the Verses) must be found.

For me that’s often discovered by writing freely, then coming back at a later point to find that some weird flower has worked its way up through the concrete and is trying to point the way.

Let me know your thoughts in the Comments section below.