Articles
Songwriting & Music Industry Guidance
How to Write Lyrics That Connect: The Power of Specificity
If your lyrics sound meaningful but don’t quite connect, this is probably why. When I was 16, my brother gave me a mix tape of Sting and Police songs. That tape got me through a summer job scraping, washing, and painting the concrete walls of my dad’s basement. What I knew about lyric writing I learned from Sting, and as it turns out, Sting’s style of songwriting didn’t look as good on me as it did on him.
What Defines the Singer-Songwriter Style, and How to Find Yourself Within It
I spend a lot of time talking about the differences between musical styles, not as categories to constrain us, but as lenses that help us better understand who we already are as writers. When we can recognize the characteristics of a style—especially the one we’re naturally drawn to—we gain clarity about why we sound the way we do, and how we might become even more ourselves.
The Tendencies of Commercial Pop
Aiming to match any genre of music when we write is often a great way to kill a song. While genre can describe what is working within a group of sounds, chords, production, melody and lyric, it doesn’t tell us what makes an individual song, or artist, unique.
Think Like a Producer: A Guide to Keeping Your Song’s Soul Intact
One of the best things we can do to grow as songwriters is record our own songs. Now that doesn’t mean that we’re recording in isolation, playing all the parts, or even producing our own project. It means that recording completes the creative cycle of writing, recording, releasing, and sharing.
Simple is Timeless
From Einstein to Mozart, simplicity has always been a cornerstone of artistic expression. Songwriting is no exception. The songs we love for a lifetime are often simple in structure, utilizing just a few themes with plenty of repetition across lyric, rhythm, chords and melody.
Big Messages, Small Moments: How to Write Songs That Say Something Real
There are a few things in life we’re told to avoid at dinner with family, namely religion and politics. As it turns out, those same topics tend to trip up us songwriters, too.
The Emotion Inside Your Rhymes
One of my longtime mentors, Pat Pattison, recently shared a beautiful article with me called “Sound in Motion.” It’s one of those pieces I wish every songwriter could read — not just once, but often. Pat reminds us that our job as lyricists isn't just to say things well, but to give singers the right sounds to sing.
How to Write Lyrics Like Radiohead
I am always in awe of writers who get away with far-reaching concepts or highly metaphorical and abstract lyrics. While the lyrics of more acoustic and grounded artists like Kris Kristofferson or Johnny Cash leans more into reality, artists like Radiohead venture far into the abstract. Their music allows for strange and interesting concepts like alien landings and fake plastic trees.
When I want to encourage a little more abstraction in my own lyric, I look towards styles and songs with that kind of language to be my guide. This is where lot of rock, metal, electronic, and some pop sits. The character is conveying truth, but does it with loads of metaphor and no sense of specific time or place.