Most if not all of us songwriters, also known as people, have our go-to stories that we write about. They can be about the past, about joy, regret, heartbreak, falling in love, falling out of love, rejection, being used, jealousy, commitment, infidelity, security, insecurity, lust, trust, lack of trust, optimistic messages of hope for oneself, the world, and mankind… and on and on.

This is natural. I’ve got mine; you’ve got yours. But there are two potential problems.

One, the more obvious, is that writing too often about the same or similar subject matter can lead to predictable lyrics and, past a certain point, an understandable lack of interest on the part of a listener, be they an audience member or an ally in the business.

Personally I believe it’s fine to ‘write the same song’ over and and over – for a while. Sometimes you have to. You need to get something out of your system, to write your way out of an obsession.

But, as with anything, there comes a time to move on. Most of the time this happens organically; interests and fixations change. You get sick of writing about certain things, or new topics capture your attention. If this doesn’t happen naturally, sometimes an outside boost can help (I’ve seen writers use my writing prompts/assignments to get out of these kinds of ruts).

The other problem, common and more insidious, is having trouble differentiating your ‘story’ – the one you unconsciously fall back on – from what belongs in a particular song’s lyric.

A key aspect of any lyric is differentiating what belongs in it from what doesn’t. Corralling the ideas that do belong, and fencing out the rest.

Writing a lyric can be very exacting. It’s a compressed form, and there’s not a lot of room for mixed messages and confusion on the part of the writer. And it’s amazing how easily aspects of one’s unconscious, one’s fallback ‘story’, can drift into almost any song, even songs where they have no place at all. “There I go again”… This can muddy the waters of even the best idea.

I’m in no way saying that anyone should avoid writing about what they’re most fascinated and even obsessed by. Even if it was possible, and I wonder about that, it’d be a bad idea  and counterproductive (not to mention, in my case, hypocritical!).

But it’s critical to make sure that those ideas actually belong in this line of this section of this song… and that they didn’t just roll in, like pieces of driftwood, on the tide of the unconscious, and attach themselves where they’re not needed.

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