Bad Songs, and How to Write Them

There are many ways to write a bad song, but most of those bad ways will fall into one of the following categories:

   1. Ignore the form of the song. The form is what makes the listener feel like they’ve been on a journey. Form, in essence, means that your song will make sense.
   2. Make sure your melody is aimless, with no real direction. Melodies of bad songs don’t have contour, and they use range and tessitura haphazardly. The end result of a bad melody is that listeners will find it hard to remember it even two minutes later. Cool.
   3. Be sure that the chord progressions make no real sense. Don’t worry about chorus progressions being different from verse progressions. If you want a bad progression, it’s good if you ignore harmonic rhythm.
   4. Ignore the fundamentals around strong versus fragile chord progressions.
   5. Stop worrying about the treatment of lyrics in a song. Forget the advice that verse lyrics are different from chorus lyrics, and don’t worry about being overly complex or descriptive.
   6. If your song really sounds bad, try to conjure up a hook that will make the listener forget about the fact that the song needs help. The hook is what it’s all about, baby.
   7. Wait for inspiration! Don’t write every day, or even every other day. It’s best to only try to write if you really feel like writing. Because when you do, whoa look out! You’re probably going to get… a really bad song!

OK, so much for the tongue in cheek. That’s how you write a bad song. And sadly, that’s why 99% of the songs out there are never going to be heard, and are never going to be recorded by anyone but except the songwriter. Even just following one of those bad pieces of advice is enough to doom a song.

So if you really want to know what makes a good song, you need to follow the eleven principles of good songwriting described in the e-book “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting.” Those eleven principles are what the professional songwriters are already doing and already following. You need to download it today and start creating winning songs.

Click here to learn more about this e-book, and the other ones that can cure your songwriting problems.

-Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website