The Beatles

Being Innovative in the Pop Music World

Innovation in pop songwriting is a tricky balancing act: you want your songs to be enough like other songs out there that you don’t scare your audience a way. But at the same time, you want your songs to move off into new and unpredictable directions, to excite your audience. Being successfully innovative is also […]

Music Studio

How to Create a Climactic Moment in a Song

Chapter 5 of “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” shows how melody and lyric need to work together. Learn how to do it right! Get the entire 10-eBook Bundle along with a free copy of “Use Your Words! Developing a Lyrics-First Songwriting Process.” A good song has a lot to do with the emotion it creates […]

Writing song lyrics

The Best Lyrics Have Lines That “Progress”

One way I like to think of good songwriting, or good anything in the creative arts, is that it always makes me think something even better is about to happen; a good song keeps me hooked and listening for the next moment. Chord progressions are the most obvious example of this concept. If you take […]

Songwriting collaboration

From Hook to Completed Song: Understanding Typical Pop Song Structure

If you write purely by instinct, it’s time to guide those instincts with songwriting knowledge. “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 10-eBook Bundle shows you, with sound samples and other examples, why great songs sound great. Comes with a Study Guide. It’s not unusual for songwriters to be able to come up with catchy hooks pretty […]

Songwriting titles

A Short Troubleshooting List For Fixing Song Lyrics

If you look at lists of songwriters who have become known as being “the best” over time, you’ll probably notice that their ability to write a good lyric is one of their most important qualities. There is a lot you can say about what makes writing a good lyric challenging, but certainly the need to […]

Bob Dylan

How Lyric Writing is Always Storytelling, On Some Level

You’re familiar with the genre of the “story song”, where the lyric amounts to “first this happened, then that happened.” But I’d like to make the case that, in a sense, all songs are story songs, where the lyric always works best if it creates a mini movie in the mind of the listener. “Best […]