For some reason, the more songs I write, the less frequently I start with a title. When I have a good one I’ll take it, happily; but recently finding the title is more often a (major) part of discovering the song as I go.

I’m a title-based songwriter; my eye and ear are always looking for the right one for the song. When writing I liken myself to someone wandering through the woods… but always looking for a glimpse of the river, or the north star, to orient myself. That’s the title for me.

At some point, for the song to move to completion I have to find a title I believe in. A strong one that suits the song. The strength of the title will often set the ceiling for how good a song can be.

Usually I find it before I go too far. At that point I have a title, maybe even the whole chorus, and some other lyrics that may stick. (Not much different from when I start with a title!)

Then comes what is often the heaviest lift of the whole song – figuring out how the rest of the lyric should relate to the title (and the words around it, if I have any yet).

This is where paying very close attention to the title can pay off. When I’m at a loss in my lyric, that’s where I look. Every word of it (even if it’s only one) contains ideas and clues that can, in the rest of the song, be worked with, against, and around, in every way from directly to abstractly.

(When talking about the title here, I’m discussing the lyric phrase that the listener will hopefully remember and sing along with, not necessarily the name that’s at the top of the lyric sheet, which could be anything… and might not even be in the song.)

Most of the best songs stay focused around their title and don’t get too off-topic. But what’s ‘off-topic’ totally depends on the style of the writer.

For example, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Gerry Goffin, Carole King, Hal David, Marvin Gaye, mid- and late-period Springsteen, Adele, and Max Martin usually take a direct approach to the title (as did most 20th century songwriters). Some, like Joni Mitchell and Amy Winehouse, use an approach you might call, ‘direct… but surprising’.

Bob Dylan often takes the direct route but, protean as he is, he also doesn’t hesitate to approach a title from many different angles in the course of a single song. But he always keeps its centrality in mind. Eminem and Frank Ocean use, and use well, a lot of poetic freedom. David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Jeff Tweedy, Kendrick Lamar, Sam Beam, or Thom Yorke might be considerably freer and sometimes abstract in their approach, depending on the period in which they wrote a particular song.

Most good lyrics aim the listener at their title in some way. For the songwriter, unraveling the strands of DNA found in the title can answer a lot of questions about what other words belong in a song.

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