Six Steps To Writing Great Songs

1) Before the writing can begin, there’s got to be a certain amount of PREPARATION, which can vary wildly:

Don Henley – “I’m always jotting things down on pieces of paper. I’ve got pieces of paper all over my house.”

Paul Simon – “It’s very helpful to start with something that’s true. If you start with something that’s false, you’re always covering your tracks. Something simple and true, that has a lot of possibilities, is a nice way to begin.”

David Byrne – “I don’t have any agenda or plan when I start writing stuff.”

Lucinda Williams – “I write first for myself as a therapeutic process, to get stuff out and to deal with it.”

Jackson Browne – “I used to write extra verses to other people’s songs that I liked. That led to writing my own songs.”

Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park) – “At first we were waiting for a new sound. Then we got tired of waiting, so we did it ourselves.”

Bruce Springsteen – “I think you have everything you need by the time you’re 18 to do interesting writing. Maybe by 12.”

2) But then, where to start? At the point of INSPIRATION, of course:

Mick Jagger – “A lot of times songs are very much of a moment. When they come to you, you write them down, no matter if you feel like it or not.”

Tom Waits – “Inspiration? It’s like nature photography. You sit there watching for three days. And then it happens!”

Billy Gibbons – “Inspiration can come from the most unlikely places. Keep your head on and your ears open.”

Melissa Etheridge – “My songs are inspired by my experiences. Sometimes they are more than my real life and, conversely, my life is more than just my songs.”

Brandi Carlile – “Songwriting isn’t something that I do or command; it just happens. I can either choose to stop and acknowledge it, or put it off and hope that it won’t fade.”

Chris Martin – “I don’t expect people to understand where songs come from, because I don’t understand either. I’ve a song ‘A Sky Full of Stars’. I had the title for a long time. I had written seven other songs with this title but none of them were right. Then one day this song just came through in one go. I don’t know who or what inspired the song and I don’t really want to question it.”

You Can’t Manufacture Inspiration

Conor Oberst – “You can’t manufacture inspiration, so a lot of it is still a waiting game for me. There’s still a lot of mystery to songwriting. I don’t have a method that I can go back to – they either come or they don’t.”

Leonard Cohen – “Inspiration is for amateurs – the rest of us just show up and get to work. A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”

Neil Young – “I don’t force it. If you don’t have an idea and you don’t hear anything going over and over in your head, don’t sit down and try to write a song. You know, go mow the lawn… My songs speak for themselves.”

Ed Sheeran – “As far as songwriting, my inspirations came from love, life and death, and viewing other people’s situations.”

3) Once INSPIRED, then there’s the songwriter’s emotional mood, the CREATIVE DRAMA if you will, that comes into play. By and large, it would appear from the quotes I found that being upset and depressed is a great resource.

Adele – “Heartbreak can definitely give you a deeper sensibility for writing songs. I drew on a lot of heartbreak when I was writing my first album. I didn’t mean to but I just did.”

Eminem – “If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs would be really whack and boring.”

John Lennon – “Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It’s like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won’t let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you’re allowed to sleep.”

Gwen Stefani – “My songs are basically my diaries. Some of my best songwriting has come out of a time when I’ve been going through a personal nightmare.”

Joni Mitchell – “You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it’s just complaining.”

Taylor Swift – “I’ve only thought about songwriting as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.”

Robert Smith – “I’ve always spent more time with a smile on my face than not, but the thing is, I don’t write about it.”

Dolly Parton – “Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.”

4) So the INSPIRATION has struck and we’ve settled into our CREATIVE DRAMA. Now we must decide which comes first – THE WORDS OR THE MUSIC?

Elton John – “When I first started working with Bernie (Taupin) it was exactly the same as it is now; I would get a lyric, I would go away and write the melody and play it to him. That’s never changed. It’s the same thing now and it’s as exciting now as it was then.

Bernie Taupin – “With me, it’s all about titles. I love coming up with titles and I work around those titles or first lines, because if you have a title, you can really build a strong chorus behind it.”

Bob Dylan – “I consider myself a poet first and a musician second.”

Steven Tyler – “Great melody over great riffs is, to me, the secret of it all.”

Hozier – “Sometimes you just kind of collect lyrical and musical ideas and don’t actually complete the song until you feel like they work together and have a home.”

Axl Rose – “I write the lyrics last, because I want to invent the music first and push the music to a level that I have to compete against it with the melody and lyric.”

Don Henley – “Sometimes songwriters and singers get a melody in their head and the notes will take precedence, so that they wind up forcing words onto a melody. It doesn’t ring true.”

Keeping It Simple

Rod Stewart – “All of my songs are written with the same four chords. That says a lot about the value of musicianship in writing hit songs.”

Rod Stewart – “I deliberate over the lyrics; I really do. I’ll come up with one line in a day, and then it might be a couple of days before I come up with the rhyming line.”

John Legend – “I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last. Some people start with the lyrics first because they know what they want to talk about and they just write a whole bunch of lyrical ideas, but for me, the music tells me what to talk about.”

John Legend – “I just try to go with what feels right musically and melodically. I’ll sometimes establish the musical format of the song and the melody of the song within the first ten minutes of the original idea coming to me… I think music should dictate the lyrics always.”

Stevie Wonder – “I can’t say that I’m always writing in my head, but I do spend a lot of time in my head writing and coming up with ideas. And what I do usually is write the music and melody and maybe the basic idea, but when I feel that I don’t have a song, I just say ‘God please give me another song,’ and I just am quiet, and it happens, and it’s just amazing.”

5) Now it’s time to get down to the real business of songwriting – taking the inspiration and emotional largesse into the WRITER’S ROOM. Here are some samples of that endeavor from those who should know:

Chrissie Hynde – “Songwriting is like working on a jigsaw puzzle, and it doesn’t make any sense until you find that last piece. It has to make sense or it doesn’t work.”

Sheryl Crow – “The writing process for me is pretty much always the same – it’s a solitary experience.”

Leonard Cohen – “I wish I were one of those people who wrote songs quickly. But I’m not. So it takes me a great deal of time to find out what the song is.” 

James Taylor – “There’ll come a writing phase where you have to spend the time, unplug the phone and put in the hours to get it done.”

Grace Potter – “Every single song I write has to feel like it has a beginning, middle, and end, like a movie or a short story.”

Paul McCartney – “The trick is to go off on your own and finish it. Separate yourself from others. Toilets are good for that.”

Alanis Morissette – “When I start writing songs and it turns into an overly belabored intellectual process, I just throw it out.”

Jason Mraz – “The easiest songs to write are pure fiction. There is no limit to how you can tell the story.”

Neil Young – “I have so many opinions about everything it just comes out during my music. It’s a battle for me. I try not to be preachy. That’s a real danger.”

Sting – “I don’t write the first line of a song. I write backwards from the chorus line or hook to come up with it.”

Wayne Coyne – “Sometimes the song title comes with the songs, other times you just sorta make something up afterwards.”

Stop Making Sense

Van Morrison – “You take stuff from different places, and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense.”

Lily Allen – “I think my songs are like nursery rhymes – little ditties that I write for myself.”

Prince – “Attention to detail – like the right words and notes in the right places – that makes the difference between a good song and a great song.”

6) And finally, there’s the AFTERMATH. How do songwriters live with the reactions to their creativity?

Stevie Nicks – “People try to find deep, hidden meanings in my songs. Actually, they’re just songs.”

Dave Grohl – “You can sing your song to 85,000 people and they’ll sing it back to you for 85,000 different reasons.”

Banks – “I never judge my own songwriting. It’s just my heart. What’s there to judge about your own heart?”

Vince Gill – “The funny thing is, people’s perceptions of what a song is about is usually wrong a majority of the time. But they’re still going to read what they want to into it.”

Ed Sheeran – “Writing a new song, finishing a new song, is the best feeling in the world. Nothing compares to it.”

More Songwriting Insights

Marty Dodson – “Songwriting is about the journey; not the destination.”

Tom Waits – “For a songwriter, you don’t really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they’re made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.”

Bob Dylan – “It is only natural to pattern yourself after someone… But you can’t just copy someone. If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to.”

Taylor Swift – “I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.”

John Prine – “I could never teach a class on songwriting. I’d tell them to goof off and find a good hideout.”

Tom Petty – “If you are working on a song, and you come up with a chord that seems really unusual, like it doesn’t fit there, it’s because it doesn’t. Take it out!”

Jason Derulo – “Songwriting is a muscle. The more you do it, the better you get at it.”

Mark Knopfler – “For me, songwriting is really where it’s at. I use the guitar just to help me write the songs. That’s it. As a result, my guitar playing suffers pretty horribly.”

Natalie Imbruglia – “Isolation is a big part of songwriting.”

Norah Jones – “All is fair in love and songwriting.”