Most songs have a “climactic moment”, usually in the chorus, but sometimes in other places, like a song’s bridge. In most cases, you can identify a climactic moment by finding the highest note. This has been a noticeable trait in music for centuries. You can go back to Handel’s oratorio “Messiah”, for example, and see […]
I was looking recently at a list of some of the world’s most covered songs, and saw a few surprises on it. Some of them were what we’ve come to expect on such lists: Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday”, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, and Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line.” But I confess I didn’t know that Ray […]
Most song lyrics tell a story, whether it recounts a series of events in chronological order, or just simply implies a story. In fact, it’s probably true to say that most songs just imply a story, and we fill in a lot of details as the listener. There are any number of examples of what I’m […]
Who knew that posting backwards versions of songs on YouTube was a thing? I came across a channel called “The Beatles Reversed”, and listened to a backwards version of “Help!” I’m not sure what the reason would be, and it should be noted that the channel has only 1.7k subscribers, so it doesn’t seem to […]
If you find that you battle songwriter’s block on a somewhat regular basis, here’s something you can try that might help: release yourself from the duty of writing an entire song in a sequential manner. It’s likely that the part of a song you work out first is the chorus hook. That’s common, because if […]
If you find that someone is able to write a complete song every few days, you might be tempted to think that there’s something magical about whatever process they’re using that helps them be so prolific. But the truth is that good songwriting is rarely about whatever process a writer might have used to create […]
