I post songwriting-related quotes on Facebook regularly; not always because I agree with them but because I think they say something worth considering. I recently posted a quote from Taylor Swift, which I put up because I thought she expressed a pretty good songwriting approach: “Think, ‘What would I say to him right now if I could and if I had the nerve to?’ And then you think of some rhymes and you put it all together.”

Along with (predictable) comments from people who don’t think anyone born after 1975 could know anything about songwriting, I got a response from Clay Mills II, hit songwriter and founder of SongTown.com,  who wrote: “Absolutely a great way to start. In my critiquing of thousands of songs I’ve discovered, too many people just start writing and don’t first think about what they want to say and who they want to say it to.”

So this brings up two good ideas. One is that you can write a song directly to (or at) someone specific for whom you have powerful feelings, at the time when you’re having those feelings (or even later).

This is actually an exercise I’ve been using for years in Beginning Songwriting classes – write a letter to someone directly expressing your feelings about them to them. And often the follow-up is to write a song based on that letter. Some people even use their letter to write a song whether there’s a follow-up assignment or not!

The other idea, the one that Clay brought up, is not just useful but important – in most songs it’s indispensable to have a clear idea of what you’re trying to say.

It seems so obvious as to not be worth mentioning, but trust me, it has laid low many a potentially good song.

Some writers won’t even start without knowing what the song’s ‘about’. This makes a lot of sense and probably saves a lot of time. Occasionally I’m in that category – I begin knowing basically what I want to say. But, for better or worse, much of the time I’m not one of those writers.

I wander, I try things, I search for words and music that combine in a potent way. But I am always looking for what the song’s ’about’. And if I don’t find (or start with) something good, I end up with a weak song. Having a strong and clear main idea, whether you begin with it or just end up with it, is so important in any kind of writing.

In most songs, I think this is primarily about the Chorus idea, and then about clearly supporting it – in some way; there are always many – in the Verses (and Bridge, if there is one). But what a song is ‘about’ also relates to what you might call its theme, which isn’t always overtly stated in the Chorus.

For example. in The Beatles’ song ‘All You Need Is Love’ the theme is clearly expressed in the Title. But in their ‘Penny Lane’, the lyric involves pictures of a specific place and time… but the theme could be said to be the vivid Power of Memory. And though the lyric stays specific, it’s also always supporting that theme.

Sometimes songs just come out in a rush. But at some point it’s worth considering what the song’s about – and then to use those thoughts to make the song more focused – and better.

(By the way, though I’ve mostly focused on the lyric, the music is, as always in songwriting, crucial and integral. The feeling and tone of the music must complement the lyric in some way, and vice versa, even if by contrast. The music will always determine how the lyric will come across; how the listener will, in the words of Yip Harburg, ‘feel the thought’.)

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