songwriter - lyricist

You’ve Got the Emotions, But You Can’t Put Them Into Words

Power up your lyric-writing abilities with “Use Your Words! Developing a Lyrics-First Songwriting Process.” It’s a FREE add-on to “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting 10-eBook Bundle” What do you do when you’ve got the song’s topic, the basic story, and a whole pile of emotion, but you just can’t find the words to make it […]

Amanda McBroom

Controlling the Emotional Build of a Verse-Only Song

Some songs make use of a verse-only construction, and Bette Midler’s hit “The Rose” (written by Amanda McBroom) is a good example of this. There are other songs that are mainly verse-only, with a short one-line refrain, like Lennon & McCartney’s “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Those two song formats, verse-only and verse-refrain, both have […]

Singer-Songwriter

Making Others Care About Your Songs

Everyone has their own motivation for becoming a songwriter. For most, and likely for you, it’s a variation on the need for self-expression. With every song, you have a thought, a feeling or an opinion that you want to express. Who knows how many possible problems or errors that can be committed when writing a […]

Joni Mitchell - Little Green

How Hidden Meaning Works: Joni Mitchell’s “Little Green”

A song where the meaning of the lyric isn’t immediately clear excites us. We’re usually intrigued by the fact that the words are so simple, the phrases and sentences so seemingly unambiguous, and yet… what does it all mean? We can usually tell when a songwriter is pouring out their soul to us, even if […]

Putting a magnifying glass on music

5 Tips to Make You a More Objective Songwriter

I believe that in songwriting, no one can improve what they do until they can hear their songs as others hear them. And that’s a big challenge; it’s not easy to develop that level of objectivity. A song represents your heart and soul in musical form. Most of the time, it’s a personal reflection of you […]

Rock concert audience

What You Can Do to Enhance the Meaning of Your Music

We all get something different out of music. For some, music is beautiful sound that gets played quietly on the home stereo, never turned up: musical wallpaper. For others, music defines who they are and takes a central role. It gets turned up loud and listened to. And more than just listening to music because […]